The Landscape Architecture Section announces Dominique Ghiggi as the 2019 Glimcher Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Knowlton School. Throughout the autumn semester, Ghiggi will conduct workshops and field research with landscape architecture students as part of the Glimcher Seminar.

Dominique Ghiggi has worked on various projects and studies in Switzerland and Senegal. She founded Zurich-based Ghiggi Paesaggi Landschaft & Städtebau (formerly ghiggi landschaft architektur, 2009-2018). The changing and often unpredictable developments of nature, in small and large scale and in both an urban and natural context, are expressed in the design and implementation of her work. Through a careful study of the history and current condition of a site, Ghiggi is able to highlight specific landscape features in relation to cultural values. Some of the topics that Ghiggi has studied with particular interest are rainwater collection, vegetative ecotypes, soil erosion and recycling material.

Ghiggi studied biology at the University of Basel and completed her master’s degree in landscape architecture at ETH Zurich. From 2002 to 2007, she was employed at Vogt Landscape Zurich. From 2008 to 2010, she was a research assistant at the chair of Prof. Günther Vogt in the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich. This work resulted in the distinctive book Cultivating the Urban Jungle, published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2010.

In addition, Ghiggi has collaborated with artists and scientific experts on projects such as La Macchina meravigliosa — a 2nd place-awarded art installation in the Lausanne Jardin Competition — developed with her previous partner Carola Antón and the Zurich-based artist Corina Rüegg. She has also collaborated with the artist Pilar García from Seville on an artistic interpretation of the practice of dendrochronology, supported by the Swiss researcher Prof. Fritz Schweingruber.

As part of the Baumer Lecture Series, Ghiggi will lecture in Knowlton Hall’s Gui Auditorium at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 30. The talk is free and open to the public.

For more than a decade, the Glimcher Distinguished Visiting Professorship is held each year by an internationally acclaimed practitioner in the field of landscape architecture. Previous Glimcher Professors have included Adriaan Geuze, Tom Leader, Peter Walker, Michael Van Valkenburgh, Michel Desvigne, Jennifer Guthrie and Shannon Nichol, João Nunes, Walter Hood, and our most recent visitor, Mikyoung Kim.