pierre bélanger

Biography

Pierre Bélanger is a designer, curator, author, educator, and builder originally trained as a landscape architect and urban planner. With transdisciplinary expertise in the areas of ecology, infrastructure, media and urbanism, he founded the Landscape Infrastructure Lab and OPSYS Media in 2001 at a moment of political uncertainty and territorial insecurity to address spatial issues across different states, systems, and scales.

As author and editor, Dr. Bélanger has published several books and projects that challenge predomi-nant states of civil engineering and urban planning rooted in the military-industrial complex, including “LANDSCAPE AS INFRASTRUCTURE,” “ECOLOGIES OF POWER” co-authored with geographer and environmental designer Alexander Arroyo, Pamphlet Architecture #35 “GOING LIVE: from States to Systems,” “RISK ECOLOGIES” co-produced with Miho Mazereeuw, and Harvard Design Magazine #39 “WET MATTER” co-edited with Jennifer Sigler (@lowlowtide).

As educator and program leader, he has taught courses and coordinated programs at graduate and postgraduate levels, as well as lead award winning research for nearly two decades at postgraduate and post-doctoral levels in the interrelated fields of design, planning, and engineering, at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Design and Center for Landscape Research.

As curator, designer, and builder, he received the Canada Prix de Rome in Architecture and was Curator of the controversial Canada Pavilion and Exhibition “EXTRACTION” at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (@1partperbillion). In collaboration with a range of creators and changemakers, he is currently completing an edited volume titled “EXTRACTION EMPIRE,” with accompanying film “CONTRA-CARTA: 2018-1215,” documenting 800 years of colonial domination and territorial dispossession underlying the systems, states, and scales of Canada as the largest extraction nation on the planet.

Education

PhD cum laude (Urban Planning, Wageningen University, NL)
Masters of Landscape Architecture (Harvard University, US)

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Territorial Dispossession, Environmental Injustices, Geopolitical & Infrastructural Ecologies, Unplanning, Deconstruction, Deengineering, Countermapping

Personal Interests

Open water swimming & cross-country running, plant & animal harvesting, territorial arts & languages

Websites

• OPSYS

• Publications

Books