Academic focus: The assembly of landscape
Research summary: I research the various ways landscapes are assembled, grounding design and construction practices within the materials and labor of our time and place, as well as the values, histories and theories of landscape architecture and its sister disciplines. My research is interdisciplinary and applied, building upon 20 years of professional practice. It explores methods of making that fall outside routine disciplinary means and addresses questions of craft, perception and contemporary notions of nature.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I enjoy the challenge of restoring an old 1887 home and garden, and spending time with my husband, bulldog and Saint Bernard in the Catskills and Upper Delaware Valley.
What brought you to Cornell CALS?
After two decades of contributing to and leading ambitious built works, like the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and new grounds for the Blanton Museum of Art, I sought to teach and mentor the next generation of designers, continuing the art of building. I was drawn to the collaborative, thoughtful faculty of CALS’ Department of Landscape Architecture, especially its balance of kind yet rigorous energy. The exceptional department is complemented by the larger setting: the university’s scale and land-grant character; beloved, applied-science figures like Liberty Hyde Bailey; and the region’s glacial terrain and histories.
