Student Lecture Series | The Dredge Research Collaborative: Designing with Sediment

Thursday, October 7, 2021, 7:30 - 9:30pm

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Bay Dredging.

This presentation will be conducted in person and through Zoom. Zoom account registration is required, please register in advance here.

The Dredge Research Collaborative is an independent 501c3 nonprofit organization which investigates human sediment handling practices, through publications, events, and other projects. Our mission is to improve sediment management through design research, building public knowledge, and facilitating transdisciplinary conversation.

Gena Wirth, RLA, is Design Principal at SCAPE. She works with cities, community advocates, and landowners to reveal the ecological and cultural potential of public landscapes.

As Design Principal, Gena translates research into practice and leads the design of complex urban landscapes including public and private waterfronts, regional trail systems, parks, plazas, and resilience plans. She is a member of the Dredge Research Collaborative and lives in New York City.

Brian Davis is an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture.

Davis was the 2019 American Academy Rome Prize recipient in Landscape Architecture. Prior to joining UVA, he was an Assistant Professor at Cornell University and has practiced landscape architecture in Buenos Aires and New York City. He is a registered landscape architect and member of the Dredge Research Collaborative. His work focuses on ports, rivers, and cities, and especially their formal interrelations through time.

The lecture will be followed by a public discussion moderated by Dov Diamond. 

The in-person portion of this event is open to Cooper Union students, faculty, and staff. Room 315F. This event is free and accessible to the public through Zoom. 

View the full Fall 2021 Lectures and Events List.


  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.