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Short, focused talks at Symbiotic House bring Miami designers, artists, and ecologists together to share practical strategies for agroecology, native-plant work, and community stewardship. If you want place-specific tools you can use the next day—this season maps the people and sites making South Florida greener.
Short, focused talks at Symbiotic House bring Miami designers, artists, and ecologists together to share practical strategies for agroecology, native-plant work, and community stewardship. If you want place-specific tools you can use the next day—this season maps the people and sites making South Florida greener.
Book with The Kampong - National Tropical Botanical Gardens
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Operated by The Kampong - National Tropical Botanical Gardens · Miami, Florida
Symbiotic House Lecture Series returns to Miami’s Douglas Road corridor, presenting a compact season of talks that tie architecture, ecology, and community practice into the city’s living fabric. Hosted at 4013 Douglas Rd. in Miami, Florida, the series is organized by artist Lee Pivnik as a forum for designers and makers working at the margins of architecture to share projects that foreground mutualistic relationships between people and place.
Over five spring evenings the program brings a lineup rooted in South Florida’s subtropical ecology and cultural networks. Cristina Bouza of Finca Morada (Jan 29) will speak from experience building an urban food forest and agroecological education site that sustains more than two hundred edible and medicinal species. On Feb 26 Josh Ehrlich of TROPICA outlines an integrated approach—architecture, interiors, and a seven-acre native nursery called SUBTROPICA—that stitches gardens into built work. March 26 features Germane Barnes of Studio Barnes, whose research links architecture with identity and historical narrative. April 30 brings Malcolm Lauredo of the Greater Miami Bureau of Time Tourism, whose public-history projects refract local memory into site-aware interventions. The season closes May 14 with Lee Pivnik presenting work from Symbiotic House and the Institute of Queer Ecology.
This series matters because it translates studio ideas into local tactics: food-forest stewardship, native-plant propagation, landscape-as-structure, and public-history projects that remake neighborhoods. For outdoor-minded visitors, the lectures offer an immediate path to action—walkable projects you can visit afterward, from Finca Morada’s half-acre plots to TROPICA’s plant lists and native-species inventories. Speakers foreground species common to South Florida—epiphytic bromeliads, native mangrove assemblages, and tropical hardwood hammock flora—so attendees leave with place-specific knowledge, not theory.
Each session pairs a focused slide talk with a Q&A and opportunities for community exchange; presenters often hand out plant lists, workshop resources, and next-step reading. The program links research to practice: attendees can follow up with site visits, volunteer shifts, or nursery tours to see methods in action. For teachers, landscape professionals, curious travelers, the series functions as a compact field school for tropical urban ecology and design, offering immediately useful strategies for planting, storm resilience, and neighborhood stewardship.
Practical details: expect a one-hour format; bring a notebook and questions. The venue at 4013 Douglas Rd. sits within reach of Miami’s public transit and bike routes, making it an easy stop on a day of field visits to community gardens and design studios. Because talks center on living systems, sessions often include plant lists, resource links, and invitations to local workshops.
If you’re visiting Miami to study how design can repair ecosystems while celebrating local culture, the Symbiotic House lectures map the practitioners doing that work today. They’re short, sharp, and distinctly Miami: urban, wet, and insistently alive.
Each lecture runs approximately one hour, generally a slide talk followed by a short Q&A.
Meet at 4013 Douglas Rd. in Miami, Florida; this is the listed venue for the series.
Booking details are available on the program’s referral link; check the event page for registration and capacity information.
The program is geared toward adults and professionals; age restrictions are not listed—contact the organizer for specifics.
Some presenters occasionally share resources or recordings; check event materials or the organizer’s announcements for availability.
Accessibility information is not provided in the listing; contact the organizer or consult the booking page for details.
The Kampong — part of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens — is a historic tropical garden located in Miami, Florida on the shores of Biscayne Bay. The site preserves the Fairchild-Sweeney House and showcases the legacy of plant explorer David Fairchild through extensive exotic fruit trees, rare tropical species, and curated collections. Visitors can choose docent-led guided tours that highlight the estate’s history and plant collections, or self-guided tours that allow leisurely exploration with a provided map. The Kampong hosts a rotating schedule of hands-on workshops and classes set in the garden landscape. Offerings include cyanotype printing for fabric, community indigo dip workshops teaching Shibori resist dyeing, edible gardening programming presented with UF/IFAS (recommended for ages 12 and up), watercolor courses led by local artist Eileen Seitz, and all-levels yoga with Sam Reynolds. Forest bathing sessions guided by neuroscientist Karina Del Punta focus on sensory practices grounded in science; evening Moonrise Forest Bathing is offered under the full moon. Several specialty experiences such as macrophotography, ikebana, functional movement, and seasonal events invite creative engagement with plants and place. Cyanotype workshops note limited spaces to encourage advance booking. The Kampong combines plant conservation, education, and cultural programming on a historic estate, offering both structured interpretation and independent discovery for visitors interested in botany, art, sustainability, and Miami’s tropical landscape. Public programs emphasize hands-on learning, conservation-minded practices, seasonal plant highlights, and the site supports research, education, and community engagement for residents and visitors from Miami and beyond, with year-round programming and volunteer opportunities available.
Book with The Kampong - National Tropical Botanical Gardens