Research

My research and practice embeds rigorous analysis and principles of landscape ecology into contemporary landscape and urban design. By generating projects in the built environment that perform in terms of ecological fitness, design innovation and in environmental stewardship I’m working to test existing methods, push new ideas and discover hybrid models of practice. As an educator, I’m also highly focused on learning and more specifically, trying to understand how design ideas are formed, tested and communicated across industries. My work over the last decade has been centered on this convergence – conceptual thinking in the academy and the fusion of landscape ecology and creative design in practice. And because so much conventional work being done in communities around the globe is aimed primarily at short-term economic gain, my practice, teaching and scholarship is concerned with finding ways to put analytical tools  – and therefore ecological agency – in the hands of communities so they can best reach their long-term goals.

Rapidly growing urban populations and subsequent impacts to social, ecological and cultural systems have produced an acute need for the fields of environmental design. Communities across the globe struggle to evolve in ecological balance, as they face enormous growth pressure and competition. The shrinking peri-urban and rural areas that they are intimately linked to also face a host of serious concerns. The need for healthier, humane, dynamic, current and accessible public space, created within a framework of cultural and ecological heritage in these environments, has arguably never been more pressing. By natural extension, the need for the next generation of designers to be engaged with this context is acute. While conventional narratives in design at such a large scale tend to insert predetermined infrastructural principles and methods, my work instead operates within frameworks of phenomenology and informal tactics to advance the field through a combination of analytical site reading, rigorous ideation and through empathy driven principles of design. I contend through my body of work, that the inquiry, understanding, and shaping of solutions to these major design problems is inextricably linked to design education, and provides appropriate context and training for future generations of environmental stewards and practitioners. With that, my scholarship is focused on three key intersectional themes: 1. Critical Practice, 2. Design Process and Communication, and 3. Design Pedagogy.

1. First, based on my diverse experience in practice, I have published, presented and exhibited a wide array of my professional work – in particular my ongoing project in La Prusia Nicaragua – appears as a chapter in the book “Total Latin American Architecture” by Ana de Brea, published in 2016 by Actar, as well as online and in conference publications around the world, including the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture and Metropolis Magazine. As far back as 2009, my informal design work in a São Paulo Favela was published in SLUMlab Journal at Columbia University, and more recently, I have published and been recognized internationally for my work that engages cultural heritage in post-industrial sites including the European Architectural Envisioning Association, with forthcoming publications in the Italian Magazine Domus and an invited article in a special issue of Topos where I illustrate the hybridity between post-industrial landscapes and contemporary development pressure. More current work examines the inevitable potential of big-data, sensors, and the smart-cities movement with the publication of “Inclusiveness in Robotic Urbanism: Rediscovering Urban Space through Interactive Data Driven Installations” in the European Design Communication Association, and a submission in the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015.

2. Second, in my teaching and scholarship on Design Process and Communication, I have published a series of articles, chapters and given numerous lectures and presentations around the globe. My community charrette methods are laid out in a chapter entitled “Design Through Ambiguity: Rapid Digital Modeling as a Conceptual Design Tool” in Michel Mounayar’s 2013 book, Design as a Social Act. I trace the evolution of charrette methods from analog to the digital age in an article published by the Design Communications Association in 2014. Another 2014 article entitled “The Design Grotesque” builds on Bruce Mau’s assertion that “Every accident provides a brief moment of awareness of real life…” by recording mechanical tolerances that lead to object- based “failures” in a series of failure-based 3D printing exercises, published by The Architectural Science Association. Interrogating the metacognitive value of rapid digital modeling and 3D printing, my recent work on the pedagogical implications of non-linear automation “Investigating the Digital/Analog/Cognitive Collision through codified CNC Mill Watercolor Painting” was awarded Best Paper at the 49th International Conference of the Architectural Science Association.