Please join CSU as we welcome our honorary guest speaker Eileen Dancuart and moderator Rick Bell on July 31, 2023, from 12-1pm ET for our next Green Cities Event of 2023!

CSU President Rick Bell will moderate the talk with Eileen Dancuart, an award-winning landscape architect who designed the Miraflores Bicentennial Park in Peru. The event will be held on Zoom.

The Miraflores Bicentennial Park, with 30,400 square meters (7.5 acres), is an emblematic work of Peruvian landscaping. Converted into a new green lung of the city, it was completed in November of 2022 and is a new jewel of tourism in Miraflores, the most visited district in the country. From the top of its cliffs, on the Malecón Armendáriz, you can see the best view of the bay of Miraflores. The sunrises and sunsets, from the viewpoints and breaks of this beautiful place, are unforgettable attractions. The Bicentennial Park stands on one of the most beautiful and safe cliffs on the Costa Verde. It resists the weight of the buildings and the seismic movements, so common in the Lima region. An original terrace system, which replicates the construction model of the Incas, has allowed additional reinforcement of the soil and slopes, with the use of new retaining walls up to ten meters high, equipped with horizontal geogrids and vertical geocells. The goals of the park’s landscape architect and her client were social inclusion, security, landscaping and attracting tourists. The park creates public space accessible to all, which allows moments of recreation and enjoyment of nature, beneficial for people’s physical and mental health. In addition the park stabilizes the cliff with a terrace system, avoiding soil erosion and the sliding of stones, which frequently occurs in other areas of the embankment. In addition, it prevents the proliferation of rodents and the generation of fires while animating and enlivening the use of public space. The landscaping of the park highlights the diversity of flora and fauna in the region and educates visitors on the environmental benefits of each of the plants and how this plurality contributes to the conservation of pollinators. Lastly the park attracts both residents of the adjacent Miraflores neighborhood as well as all Limeños and visitors to the city. It is one of the best postcards of the coastline, allowing all who visit to appreciate sunsets with the characteristic redness of Miraflores: red, orange and intense yellow tones reflected in the clouds illuminated by the sun.

Event Recording

Speaker

Eileen Dancuart was born in Arequipa Peru. She is an Architect and has graduate studies at the University of Salamanca, Spain and at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in the USA, where she was a Fulbright fellow at the Department of Landscape Architecture. She has worked in the field of landscape architecture for over the last 20 years in Peru, from the coastal through the mountain and the forest regions. She is the founder and CEO of Paisaje Vivo Company, which does consultancy, design and maintenance of landscape architecture projects, and has the representation of ZinCo green roofs trademark in Peru. Her designs include green roofs, urban spaces, hotels, commemorative sites, educational and retail projects. She is Vice President of the Peruvian Association of Landscape Architecture and has been teaching at the Architecture School of UPC University and has given conferences at different institutions. Some of her favorite projects are: Las Casitas del Colca Hotel, Stone Park at Las Piramides de Tucume, CEM green roofs, among others. She was commissioned to design the Miraflores Bicentennial Park, which was recently constructed.

Moderator/Host

Rick Bell, FAIA, 2023 CSU President: Rick Bell is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University and Deputy Director of the Center for Buildings, Infrastructure & Public Space. He previously worked at NYC DDC and the AIANY.

Learning objectives

• Describe the relation of the Miraflores Bicentennial Park to the geology, geography and climate of the Lima region.
• Discuss how the terracing of the park works for both seismic stability and the encouragement of physical activity.
• Identify how the plantings selected educate park visitors on environmental issues and provide habitat for pollinators.
• Illustrate how creative design, community initiative and political considerations intersect to enable public space innovation.

Co-Sponsoring Organizations for Green Cities 2023

Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization, UN-Habitat, AIA New York, AIANY Planning & Design, the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, Habitat Professionals Forum for Sustainable Cities, Perkins-Eastman, Creative Exchange Lab, Columbia University Center for Buildings, Infrastructure & Public Space (CBIPS) and Global Urban Development (GUD)

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We are looking forward to seeing you at the Green Cities Event!