Date: 27.03.14
Time: 19:15
Venue: Thomas Davis Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College.
Peter Beard is an architect specialising in work within historic and ecologically sensitive landscape settings. His projects are characterised by a detailed attention to qualities of material and construction, and a studied response to the particular natural and cultural heritage of each site. Built work includes the classroom complex designed for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds at their Purfleet reserve, which closely integrates landscape elements and buildings, winning a national award from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2011. His practice, LANDROOM, has also completed an extensive programme of landscape and public access works across the Inner Thames marshes, including the creation of new wetlands, farm management infrastructure, and the Trackway, a new bridge re-establishing the historic connection between the marshes and Rainham village. The practice was a leading contributor to the East London Green Grid planning strategy, commissioned by the Greater London Authority, receiving the Landscape Institute President’s Award in 2009. Current commissions include further strategic landscape planning studies for sites across East London and Essex.
Since 2011 he has taught as a Design Critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design – past teaching has included design studios at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and at Cambridge University. His writing on architecture and landscape has been published in several journals including AA Files and Topos. In 2003 he was awarded a fellowship by NESTA, the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts, to develop his work on post-industrial and post-military landscape sites.