Karen Lutsky is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University and Director/Founder of the Great Lakes Design Labs. She comes to the department from the University of Minnesota where she taught landscape architecture for over nine years and was Director of Undergraduate Studies. Karen’s work and research focus on how landscape architects and designers might better design ‘with' change and more critically engage with resilience inherent in specific landscapes and landscape systems. Over the years, this work has included the development of the design approach, Curious Methods,' a particular emphasis on the ‘quick’ littoral landscapes of the Great Lakes Basin and ‘slow’ growth and cycles of trees and vegetation. Her work with the Great Lakes Design Labs is collaborative and trans-disciplinary working with colleagues, students, and often the larger public through exhibitions, workshops, built projects, competitions, and symposiums.
Selected Publications
Lutsky, Karen, and Sean Burkholder. Five Bay Landscapes Curious Explorations in the Great Lakes Basin. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022.
Lutsky, Karen, and Sean Burkholder. “Curious Methods.” Places Online Journal, May 2017.
Vanucchi, Jamie, and Karen Lutsky. “A Feral Forest.” 30 Trees, edited by Ron Henderson, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2023.
Lutsky, Karen. “Composite Drawings + Landscape Ideations.” Conceptual Landscapes, edited by Simon M. Bussiere, Routledge, 2023.
Lutsky, Karen, and Sean Burkholder. “Reclaiming the Littoral.” Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan, edited by Daniel Ibanez, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, Mason White, Actar, 2017.
