Collaboration: A Force for Change?

AIA Award-winning architect Marlon Blackwell and leading environmental Engineer Dr. Marty Matlock are joined by CALL's founder and artistic director Mary Miss for a conversation on the power and challenges of collaboration, as well as our relationship with the natural world. 

This podcast is lightly edited from the recording of a live zoom event on December 2nd, 2020.

Marlon Blackwell is an architect and winner of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal. He is the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture at University of Arkansas. His current work includes a plan in St. Louis that will connect Forest Park to downtown and the Gateway Arch to, linking neighborhoods north and south. He is also working on an early childhood education center in Detroit that will be part of the “cradle to career” development repurposing the recently closed Marygrove College campus – the largest philanthropic investment into a Detroit neighborhood in the city’s history. Blackwell joined the board of CIty as Living Laboratory in 2020.

Dr. Marty Matlock is an ecological engineer, professor, and executive director of the University of Arkansas Resiliency Center. His research focuses on the interface of food, water, and community systems. He works with ecologists, engineers, architects, social and political scientists, agricultural scientists, economists, and business leaders to create new understanding and framing of vexing human challenges. Matlock also brings his perspective as Chairman of the Cherokee Nation Environmental Protection Commission.

Mary Miss is an environmental artist and the artistic director of City as Living Laboratory. She is dedicated to creating opportunities for artists to work with scientists and community members to address current social and environmental challenges. In 2009, Miss founded City as Living Laboratory, creating a framework for making issues of sustainability and climate change tangible through the arts. Miss is currently working on two urban scale projects, ‘WaterMarks: an Atlas of Water for the city of Milwaukee’ and ‘Rescuing Tibbetts Brook: One Stitch at a Time.”

CALL// CIty a Living Laboratory works with artists, scientists, and residents of urban communities to create sustainable solutions for urgent environmental issues including climate, equity and health. We help people connect environmental challenges to personal experience and take action.