Tertulia Nights: Florida, Wild, Design with Stephanie Wakefield

Florida, Wild, Design

When it rains in Miami, Joan Didion’s liquidity permeates everything. Buildings and palms seem to swim against the sky. In these moments, a portal opens to Florida’s primordial unconscious—a vital place beyond flood risk maps or wildlife management plans, yet still possible and designable today. Through a screening and discussion of film, video, and archival clips, urban geographer Stephanie Wakefield guides visitors to imagine rewilding Florida, starting from native species reintroduction but pushing further toward a deeper revitalization of people, nature, and space. The screening will emphasize design: both ‘Old Florida’—houseboats, stilted bars, limestone architectures—and a 21st-century landscape of crypto islands, hybrid panther corridors, drone-managed wildfires, and a culture of physicality: outdoor school gyms beneath cypress trees and Starships.

Stephanie Wakefield is an urban geographer whose work analyzes the philosophical, technical, and environmental transformations of urban thought and design in the 21st century. She is currently Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Design in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida Atlantic University. She is author of Miami in the Anthropocene: Urban Resilience and Rising Seas (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Anthropocene Back Loop: Experimentation in Unsafe Operating Space (Open Humanities Press, 2020), and co-editor of Resilience in the Anthropocene: Governance and Politics at the End of the World (Routledge, 2020).

Enjoy a complimentary beverage from La Tropical.

This event is made possible by the generous support of Art Bridges Foundation's Access for All program.

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Host or Publisher FIU Frost Art Museum