Pablo Pérez-Ramos

Harvard GSD - Cambridge, MA

"The Thermodynamic Garden"

Wednesday, February 18, 2026 | 6:00PM | ARCH 132 DF Pray Lecture Theatre

Stream online: https://rwu.zoom.us/j/92994621707

Pablo Pérez-Ramos is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he coordinates the first-semester Landscape Architecture Core Studio and teaches research seminars and lecture courses in landscape theory. He holds Doctor of Design and Master in Landscape Architecture degrees from the GSD and is a licensed architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM). 

What material orders would simply emerge on Earth’s surface if human action were to disappear? That is, what physical configurations do natural forces—those emanating from processes and agents indifferent to us—tend to produce in our absence? Moreover, how different are such orders from the ones we build through design and technology? In other words, what degree of tension exists between human-introduced orders and the other-than-human forces that act around and through them?

The Thermodynamic Garden will examine the design fields as active interferences with the energy flows and material orders that emerge on the Earth’s surface. By applying thermodynamic principles to design thinking, it will reframe the spatial design fields as constraints that both limit and propel the material configurations resulting from the universal tendency of energy to degrade. Using examples of vernacular landscapes in conditions of extreme aridity, it will describe propensities that unfold independently of human action, and will examine how design and technology interfere with, accelerate, slow down, or even eliminate them.

Return to Cummings School of Architecture Events Series