Jerry van Eyck co-founded !melk, a landscape architecture and urban design practice dedicated to large-scale urban and landscape interventions as well as public spaces and gardens, with deliberate references to local context, history, urban setting and surrounding ecology. !melk’s projects merge realism and fantasy to make spaces of wonder that sustain themselves and engage their communities.

Trained as a landscape architect and industrial designer, Jerry van Eyck is interested in how open and public space fit into the larger context of a city’s fabric and the urban experience, with the micro – materiality, ornamentation, and pattern as expressed through custom furniture, lighting, paving, and other details that provide each project its own singular identity. Jerry van Eyck will give three lectures in Alaska on April 2-4.

The rendering above is part of !melk’s Great Lakes-inspired vision for the new Pierscape design of the iconic and popular Navy Pier in Chicago.

Marko Peljhan is an internationally-active artist who deals with questions of art, science and technology. He has introduced his work in museum displays, exhibitions and festivals around the world. Peljhan established the art and technology organization “Zavod Projekt Atol” in 1995 in his native Slovenia, and set up “PACT Systems”, a global network for developing technologies on a base of open-source and strategic media.

A professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, Peljhan is also currently a coordinator for the Arctic Perspective Initiative art/science/tactical media project, which is focused on the global significance of the Arctic geopolitical, natural and cultural spheres. Marko Peljhan will give three lectures in Alaska on March 5-7.

Oslo-based Reiulf Ramstad and his firm RRA (Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter) have been accumulating architectural awards for their iconic design in Norway and other northern locations. Ramstad’s work seeks to expose the tension between the local and global, the natural and artificial, and immobility and change. Reiulf Ramstad will give three lectures in Alaska on February 13-15.

Recent articles on Dezeen.com and Phaidon.com look at his practice’s newly-completed restaurant and service centre at the foot of the Trollveggen (Troll Wall), one of Norway’s most popular nature attractions.