February 15, 2010 — Dirk Sijmons, former Dutch national landscape architect and co-founder of H+N+S LandscapeArchitects, will give the Myles H. Thaler Lecture, "The City and the World," at the University of Virginia's School of Architecture on Feb. 26, from 5 to 7 p.m., in Campbell Hall, room 153.

Sijmons is professor of environmental design at Technical University in Delft, The Netherlands, and chairman of OASE, a bilingual journal on architecture theory. His most recent book, "Greetings from Europe," addresses the relationship between leisure and landscape in Europe. He received the prestigious Edgar Doncker Award for his contribution to Dutch culture in 2007.

An accompanying exhibit, "Dike Patrol," will feature the work of U.Va. students who traveled to the Netherlands last summer to explore projects to make the coast and inland waterways there less vulnerable to rising sea-level and river flooding. The exhibit showcases projects that are embedded in the Dutch national effort labeled the "delta commission" and that are in the process of implementation. The exhibit will be open to the public Feb. 22 though 26, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the first floor entry lobby outside Campbell Hall, room 153.

In 1990, Myles H. Thaler, a member of the first graduating class of the Department of Landscape Architecture, endowed a perpetual lecture fund  "to bring to the School of Architecture nationally prominent scholars and practitioners to give public presentations on the subject of 'the meaning of the garden,' in order to expand public awareness of the cultural significance throughout history of gardens both public and private."