Describing a discipline
History of landscape architecture is a complex endeavor as it engages narratives of our built environments and spans the entirety of human's existence, at least in theory. It is also the history of settlements on the land, making of place in the landscape. Thus it is about the history of cities, or the process of urbanization, by which cities are generated. Or it can mean the history of the profession of Landscape Architecture beginning with the emergence of design disciplines and professions in the Rennaissance. For others it is more recent, in the history of the profession that we know today, thus beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. For most it is a combination of these- a history of intentional design, making of the first settlements and cities, all the way through what we call a profession in the 21st century.
In my research, landscape history engages multiple and diverse narratives about human relationships to landscape and place. It engages with our efforts to design, shape, manipulate landscape as a spatial medium for pleasure, for production, and for settlement. Cities and urban landscapes (streets, buildings, neighborhoods, transportation systems, infrastructural networks....) play critical roles as designed landscapes as do gardens, parks, and national parks. As a whole, these designed landscapes frame our existence, our past, present, and futures on the planet aesthetically, socially, culturally, economically, politically, .... Furthermore I am intriqued by the designers, and how they come to imagine the design and how is it constructed, used, and received. These lead to questions of how do designed landscapes shape how we live in the world, an increasingly urban world? How can design foster civil society and sustainable life habits?
Research- a summary
My research, built on the thinking and scholarship of many others, is framed by feminist histories of design and in particular the role of women as professionals and practitioners. I have sought to contribute to the growing body of scholarship with Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design (2009, University of Virginia Press, 2013, paperback edition) and more recently chapters, essays, and encyclopedia entries.
My recent work has explored the emerging scholarship on issues of race, gender, and urban landscapes. This engages issues of social movements, equity, and environmental justice within an historic framework. This requires re-thinking questions of race, gender, segregation, and resistance in the practice of landscape architecture, particularly in the past two centuries. It is complex and thick. The concept of thick sections has shaped my work as I seek to find multiple ways to explore narratives of the past that might help us better understand who we are and what our futures might hold.
Books
Co-editor with Carlyn Ferrari, Seattle University, Black Women's Gardens: as Art and Practice, forthcoming in 2026.
co-Editor with Eric Avila, UCLA, Segregation and Resistance in American Landscapes, Trustees of Harvard University/ Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscapes Studies Series, 2023.
Editor, Garden as Art: Beatrix Farrand and Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees of Harvard University/ Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscapes Studies Series, 2022.
Landscape Architect A.E. Bye: Sculpting the Earth, Modern Landscape Design Series, Library of American Landscape History & W.W. Norton Publishing, pending approval.
GGN: 1999-2018, Timber Press, 2018
River Cities: City Rivers, edited collection, Harvard University/ Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscapes Studies, 2018.
From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design: the Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag, 2015, University of Washington Press. See a trailer by clicking here
For an interview at Seattle Town Hall between Thaisa Way and Richard Haag, see
http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos?videoid=x56050
with Jeff Hou, Ben Spencer, and Ken Yocom, eds. Now Urbanism: The Future City Is Here, 2014, Routledge Publishing.
Unbounded Practice: Women and Landscape Architecture in the early Twentieth Century. University of Virginia Press, 2009, 288 pages (**paperback Fall 2013)..
