Webinar | City as Canvas: Urban Landscapes

How do cities evolve when public space becomes a shared canvas, one shaped not only through design, but through dialogue, ecology, and collective imagination? In the latest Architecture Hunter webinar, City as Canvas: Urban Landscapes, we welcomed Deborah Saunt, Founder-Director of the architecture, landscape and research studio DSDHA, and Pedro Lira, Co-founder of Natureza Urbana, for a deep exploration of how urban environments can be reshaped to support more just, regenerative, and human-centered futures.

Throughout the session, both speakers revealed practices grounded in research, lived experience, and a nuanced understanding of the city as an adaptive organism. Much like past conversations that examined how creative disciplines expand our perception of space or how architectural transformation rewrites existing narratives, this edition positioned urban design as an evolving dialogue, between communities, ecologies, and the infrastructures that sustain daily life.

Speaking from London, Deborah Saunt shared DSDHA’s long-term engagement with spatial justice, introducing the city not as a static object but as a layered ecology shaped by policy, memory, mobility, and the natural systems beneath our feet. Using projects across Camden, the West End, and the City of London, she illustrated how streets, campuses, and civic landscapes can be retrofitted into more inclusive, biodiverse, and socially meaningful environments. Her methodology, rooted in mapping, co-design, and long-term stewardship, underscored that public space is not merely built; it is continuously negotiated. For DSDHA, design becomes an act of listening: to young people, commuters, local residents, institutions, and the slow intelligence of nature itself.

From São Paulo, Pedro Lira expanded the conversation to Latin America, where urban transformation intersects with ecological restoration, resilience, and the challenges of developing contexts. Presenting projects ranging from waterfront requalifications to large-scale public parks and city-center regenerations, Pedro emphasized the necessity of turning environmental constraints into opportunities for collective wellbeing. His work demonstrates how nature-based solutions, mobility strategies, and community-led processes can re-anchor urban life around coexistence, between built fabric and ecosystem, between cultural identity and contemporary need.

Together, Deborah and Pedro offered a powerful reminder: cities are living canvases, continuously reshaped by the people who inhabit them. Through research-driven design and a renewed understanding of landscape as a connector, between histories, climates, and communities, urban environments can become more equitable, more imaginative, and more deeply attuned to the rhythms of everyday life.

_article written by Daniela Moreira da Silva
_speaker 01: Deborah Saunt - Founder-Director of the Architecture, Landscape and Research Studio DSDHA
_speaker 02: Pedro Lira - Co-founder of Natureza Urbana