Baumer Series: Kimberly Garza

Kimberly Garza will discuss the role of tactical urbanism and urban prototyping in her practice, Atlas Lab, and how it can be used as a tool to engage communities, create authentic experiences, and empower designers to improve the built environment using low cost, small scale strategies. Her lecture, Designing Conscious Spaces, enlists designers to no longer wait for traditional design opportunities to occur, but rather to initiate and take quick action to create positive change in the world. Traditional landscape architectural projects often carry lengthy timelines and lacking meaningful community engagement opportunities, tactical urbanism and urban prototyping have emerged to directly engage communities and influence how public spaces should be used and defined.

Kimberly Garza is Founder and Principal of ATLAS Lab Inc., a mission-driven landscape architecture, urban design, and public art practice based in Sacramento, CA. Kimberly is committed to designing, building, and advocating for conscious change in the built environment to make accessible, positive, and progressive impacts on communities. She is a landscape architect, artist, and educator with fifteen years of experience working with private and public developments across the country. Her work has been internationally recognized, published, and exhibited, including juried selection for the Market Street Prototyping Festival, International Garden Festival in Quebec, Canada, and winning proposal for the Sacramento Capitol Mall design competition. She was named 40 Under 40 Urban Innovator by NextCity.org. and 40 Under 40 Honoree by the Sacramento Business Journal. She holds degrees in landscape architecture from UC Berkeley and Harvard University.

The Baumer Lecture Series invites prominent researchers and practitioners of architecture, landscape architecture, and city and regional planning to present their work and to engage issues both topical and enduring.