We would like to welcome Rob Holmes as the 2013 Marie M. Bickham Chair. Rob will be bringing his research in operative and logistical landscapes to the design studio, seminar courses, and collaborating with faculty and students throughout the Spring Semester. Rob will be leading Design Week this Spring and has invited Mason White of Lateral Office. With the students, Rob and Mason will introduce a project speculating on a series of alternate futures for container ports across the globe. Previously, Holmes taught landscape architecture as an adjunct member of the faculty at Virginia Tech (Alexandria) and practiced landscape architecture with Michael Vergason Landscape Architects (Alexandria). He is co-founder of Mammoth, a research and design collaborative, which investigates the interface of infrastructures, logistics, landscape, and architectural possibilities in contemporary cities, a founding member of the ExEx, and a member of the Dredge Research Collaborative.

His writing, research, and design work has been published in various magazines, journals, and books including Bracket, Urban Design Review, Landscape, Landscape Architecture, Making the Geologic Now, GOOD, Quaderns, MONU, La Tempestad and Crit. His design work has received awards in international competitions including the Arid Lands Institute’s Drylands Design (2012) and the Van Alen Institute’s Envisioning Gateway (2007), and has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the Architecture + Design Museum in Los Angeles and Artefact Festival 2012 in Belgium. His most recent public appearances were at Studio-X NYC, MediaLab Prado, and LSU’s Coastal Sustainability Studio. In fall 2012, he co-organized DredgeFest NYC, the first in a series of events examining design, theory, and practical expertise related to the human management of sedimentary processes within urban systems.