From the Architecture to the Ecology of the City

Brian McGrath and Jean Gardner in Conversation with Steward Pickett

While Aldo Rossi’s book distinguished the architecture of the city as a collective artifact as opposed to individual buildings in the city, Dr. Steward Pickett, in framing the work of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, distinguished between the ecology of the city and the green space in the city that had been the previous focus of urban ecology. How can the two conceptions of the architecture and ecology of the city be linked? With the recent publication of the book Science for the Sustainable City, researchers from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study present empirical evidence from twenty years of research on the intersection of ecology, environmental justice, and design in Baltimore.