The League’s FF – Distance Edition, an online version of the long-running First Friday series, is returning to the first Friday of every month, with a new start time of 12 p.m. FF – Distance Edition brings participants on site, offering virtual access to practices’ workspaces and current projects. Following each presentation, join in an open conversation with the designers.

This season’s events feature design practices that are redefining the contemporary public landscape by responding to social and environmental concerns and exploring the intersections of architecture, technology, and ecology.

Ken Smith Workshop was founded in 1992 in New York City. Led by multidisciplinary designer Ken Smith, the firm operates at the nexus of landscape architecture, urbanism, and art. Its work focuses primarily on existing or reworked urban spaces, “pushing beyond traditional landscape typologies of plaza, street, and garden to conceptualize landscapes that are hybridized from diverse traditions and influences,” according to the firm.

Completed projects include: 

• Meatpacking District, the permanent redesign of a historic Manhattan thoroughfare. 
• St. Pete Pier, a twelve-acre pedestrian-oriented pier in St. Petersburg, Florida. 
• 1271 Avenue of the Americas, the restoration and modernization of a midcentury plaza in the Rockefeller Center district. 

Current and upcoming projects include: 

• Powerhouse Arts, a new courtyard and waterfront esplanade for an art production facility in a rehabilitated former power station in Brooklyn. 
• Croton Water Filtration Plant, a large-scale multi-use landscape built atop a major underground water filtration plant in New York’s Van Cortlandt Park.

The program will be moderated by Maria Bellalta. Bellalta is dean of landscape architecture at the Boston Architectural College. She has worked on planning and urban design projects throughout the United States and the Middle East, with an emphasis on sustainable design for civic spaces and new urban landscapes.