Keynote: Michelle Delk

Michelle will share how Snøhetta brings together perspectives from various design disciplines and collaborates with others to shape their work. She will share examples of adaptive transformations of complex sites across North America. By asking the right questions before proposing solutions, adaptive transformations are a means of revitalizing not only buildings, but entire sites. A detailed walk through the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library project will provide a look at how projects can honor the past while preparing for a resilient, inclusive future. A close look at the design decisions will show how the project offers an opportunity for visitors to learn both about, and from, Theodore Roosevelt.

Michelle Delk is a Partner with Snøhetta and leads the Landscape Architecture practice in the Americas. As a passionate advocate and designer of the public realm, her work is evocative of a foundational premise shared with Snøhetta: to create places that enhance the positive relationships between people and their environments. Michelle encourages innovative approaches to collaboration that are nonhierarchical and trans-disciplinary. Both aspirational and pragmatic, she seeks to discover and expand the urban landscape vernacular, striving to express the subtleties of place through the incongruities of memory, environment, and social perceptions. Michelle is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Laurie Olin Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, a board member with the NYC Urban Design Forum, and a member of The Cultural Landscape Foundation Stewardship Council. She actively supports a variety of landscape advocacy organizations, curatorial projects, and academic institutions.

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