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Date:
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Time:
6:30 pm
Location:
The Kampong (4013 S Douglas Road Miami FL 33133)
The Symbiotic House lecture series returns to The Kampong for a third season, starting with this special opening installment. For more information on future lectures, visit the Symbiotic House page.
Join us at The Kampong for an evening with Dr. Jazmin Locke-Rodriguez, Sebastian Ruiz, and Robert Colón. Working across environmental science, landscape design, urban planning, and artistic practice, these three Miami locals will each introduce their work in a lightning talk, then come together for a panel conversation about their shared visions for climate care and environmental repair in South Florida. This event is part of the Symbiotic House Lecture Series, a forum for open and participatory research that gathers artists and designers that are working at the edges of architecture to share how their practices encourage mutualism through design. The Symbiotic House Lecture series is organized by Lee Pivnik.
Presented by: The Benjamin & Gloria Joannou, Jr. Family Conservation Fund
Dr. Jazmin Locke-Rodriguez is an environmental scientist, agroecologist, and founder of Phytoflora Gardens, a South Florida practice bringing productive floating wetlands to urban waterways. A postdoctoral research associate at Florida International University’s Institute of Environment, she studies how green infrastructure can improve water quality, recover nutrients, and support habitat in canals, lakes, and other managed waterways. Her research focuses on growing flowers and restoration plants on floating platforms, where their roots absorb excess nutrients from the water. This approach connects pollution treatment with the cultivation of useful plants, creating opportunities for local production and ecological restoration. Through research, entrepreneurship, and community partnerships, she works to bring more ecological functions into urban waters and rethink conventional stormwater management. She holds a Ph.D. in Earth Systems Science from FIU.
Sebastian Ruiz is a Miami-based artist, landscape designer, and founder of Florilab / Florida Landscape & Build. Guided by ecosystem reconstruction, he works with the diversity of South Florida’s native plants as a living medium, shaping spaces through form, texture, and growth. Bringing together sculpture, installation, and ecological stewardship, he designs and constructs dense native landscapes that restore habitat and reconnect people and wildlife with the original ecological character of the places they inhabit.
Robert Colón is a landscape and urban designer, adaptation planner, civil servant, and multidisciplinary artist based in Miami Beach, FL. Raised in Tampa and trained in landscape architecture and science, Robert has dedicated his career to regenerating Florida’s natural ecosystems and building resilience in the vulnerable urban communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
Robert is a Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellow for Innovation and Leadership, an Olmsted Scholar, and a Community Design Fellow at the University of Miami Center for Urban and Community Design. Through these fellowships, he researches how to scale regional nature-based solutions in South Florida to address holistically the hazards of sea level rise, extreme heat, stormwater flooding, and pollution.
Robert believes that the future of our landscape should be shaped by all of its residents, and that our one of a kind environment should be at the core of our civic identity. In his ongoing fellowship project, Evertecture, he explores how to empower South Florida residents to meaningfully participate in climate adaptation for their community and to advocate for nature-based solutions.
