Landscape as Agency
Johanna Gibbons & Neil Davidson
J&L Gibbons, London
2026
Event
The lecture begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Oskar von Miller Forum. At the same time, a player will appear here allowing you to watch the livestream. The lecture will be held in English.
Topic
Landscape as Agency: Regenerating Cities Through Nature, Community, and Care
Biodiversity is at a critical tipping point, while urban habitats are expanding faster than any other ecosystem. In this human-made condition, the future of our cities depends on their ability to become places full of life.
In this lecture, Johanna Gibbons and Neil Davidson present the work and thinking behind J&L Gibbons. Through selected projects and design strategies, they explore how radical ecological concepts can be embedded in the public realm to address urban nature, social justice, and community care.
The talk highlights how landscape architecture can act as an active agent of transformation—regenerating cities through design approaches that place ecology, people, and long-term responsibility at their core.
Johanna Gibbons & Neil Davidson
Landscape Architects and design partners Johanna Gibbons and Neil Davidson have enjoyed 25 years of creative practice together – shaping the practice, cultivating an ethos and nurturing a philosophy championing landscape architecture, with urgency, as a critical discipline in shaping a more resilient, healthy and uplifting vision for the future.
Johanna Gibbons RDI is Founding Partner of J&L Gibbons established in 1986 and Founding Director of social enterprise Landscape Learn. Jo is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute and The Royal Society of Arts and a Royal Designer for Industry. She has been elected as the next Master of the Royal Designers for Industry, the first Landscape Architect to take the highly prestigious role alongside her practice, where she works across all studio projects.
Neil Davidson is Studio Director at J&L Gibbons, a Fellow of the Landscape Institute and the Royal Society of Arts and Director of the social enterprise Landscape Learn. Neil has lectured and worked in Europe and the US and maintains strong links with education. He leads the studio’s work on cultural landscapes, notably at the Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh, Boston Spa Renewed for the British Library and the Urban Nature Project at the Natural History Museum.
J&L Gibbons
