Postponed_ Spring 2022 Lecture: Reed

This lecture has been postponed.

The March 7 lecture featuring Chris Reed and Mike Bellame has been postponed due to air travel cancellations. Watch for the rescheduled date.

We will be rescheduling the lecture featuring Chris Reed, founding director of Stoss Landscape Urbanism in Boston and Los Angeles, and Mike Belleme, a documentary photographer.

The lecture, “Mise-en-Scène,” takes a deep dive into the social lives of cities and the people who live in them—as well as the broader urban, social, political, cultural and environmental contexts in which they are situated. It highlights both the realities of contemporary urbanism, including climate change, social and racial tensions, rapid development, and multiculturalism, and the opportunities for creating everyday common grounds and places for all of us to interact with one another.

This collaboration between Belleme and Reed has created a connection between the lives and situations depicted in the photographs and how they set the stage for the work done in cities. The designs and projects set up new or altered conditions that themselves prompt new responses, new actions, new dynamics, new scenes that continue to play out long after they leave.

Learn more about the lecturers…

Chris Reed

Chris Reed is the founding director of Stoss and is recognized internationally as a leading voice in the transformation of landscapes and cities. He works alternately as a researcher, strategist, teacher, designer and advisor. A recipient of the 2012 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Landscape Architecture, Chris is a professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Mike Belleme

Mike Belleme is a self-taught, Appalachian-born documentary photographer living in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Belleme’s work intimately examines themes of connection and community and the physical, mental and social constructs that cultivate and inhibit connection. At the heart of Belleme’s work is a considered approach to contemporary issues that help us explore the seen and unseen forces that dictate how we perceive each other and the world around us. Belleme’s assignment work, primarily focused in the rural southeastern United States, can be seen in such publications as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time, The Guardian, National Geographic and many more. His first book, “Mise-en-Scène,” is a collaboration with urbanist, Chris Reed, exploring the implications of design at a variety of scales on urban life and ecology.

The lecture is funded by the Robert B. Church Memorial Lecture Fund. It is free and open to the public, and visitors are asked to follow all current guidelines regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. We strongly encourage visitors and our college community to wear masks.

The health of our Volunteer family and the surrounding communities remains our top priority. Due to COVID-19, events in our college are subject to change. Please familiarize yourself with the current COVID-19 protocols on campus. For last-minute changes to this event, check this page as well as the college’s Facebook page.