This talk shares the development of a design lab and set of interdisciplinary tools and initiatives aimed at reimagining how inclusive design can operate within the technical constraints of flood infrastructure—specifically along the Los Angeles River. Working with advanced hydraulic modeling, community partners, artists, and landscape architects, the lab creates new ways of engaging the river’s margins—both literal and political—as sites of authorship, imagination, and agency. By treating the hydraulic limit not as a boundary but as a design medium, the lab opens space for communities to participate in reshaping infrastructure that has long excluded them.

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About the speaker:
Alexander (Alex) Robinson is a landscape architect, researcher, and scholar. His work seeks to reinvent our most consequential anthropogenic landscapes through collective authorship, multidisciplinary tools, and community engagement. As an Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture + Urbanism program, he researches how civic infrastructure can function as landscape, exploring methods to re-envision their ecological function and community value. He also is an active member of TEST PLOT and co-runs the small private practice Double Iris.