Kate Chesebrough’s design studios and seminars promote care and curiosity while working with the multiple truths of landscapes. Her background in the arts informs a fundamental connection to powerful spatial and material experiences. Kate is a passionate advocate for trees, public spaces, and vibrant communities as vital to long-term socioecological resilience. Her design research methods embrace complex conditions through fieldwork and analysis to inform sensitive design proposals that realize ambitious goals over time. Her highly collaborative approach facilitates dialogue through drawing to integrate the diverse expertise of her academic, professional, and community partners.
Kate’s design ethic unites disparate settings and issues. She has worked in informal settlements in the majority world as an Urban Forestry Research Fellow at CIFOR-ICRAF in Nairobi, Kenya; as an artist in residence at Escola Vidigal and Vik Muniz Studio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and as a longtime volunteer with the US – El Salvador Sister Cities network. These collaborations contribute to ongoing community-led initiatives. Her work seeks to support and expand ways of living with urban ecologies, and how these influence design.
A life-long resident of New York State, Kate is committed to our regional landscapes and communities. As a licensed Landscape Architect, Kate led interdisciplinary teams through outreach, design, and approvals processes for public and private mixed-use, housing, public space, park, and streetscape projects as an Associate and Project Manager at Whitham Planning & Design. She continues to consult independently.
Selected Publications
- “Caring Forest Urbanisms: Human - Tree Relationships of Tenure, Memory, and Livelihood in Nairobi, Kenya”, Footprint, TU Delft Architecture Theory Journal Issue 38: Africa Dreams: Re-Enchantment Through Relational Ontologies. 2026. Forthcoming.
- “Growing Trees Through Ground-Up Urban Forestry: A Landscape Architect’s Perspective on Nairobi’s Unique Potential for Equitable and Ecological Urban Greening”. Mazingira Yetu Environmental Magazine, 2023
Selected Presentations
- Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, “Transformed By Care: Growing Trees in Informal Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya Inspires New Directions for Urban Forestry.” 2024
- 2nd Annual World Forum on Urban Forests, “Transforming Road Rights-of-Way into Urban Forestry Corridors in Nairobi, Kenya”. 2023.
- 1st seminar on Urban Forestry, Centre for International Forestry and Agroforestry Research (CIFOR-ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya. 2023.
- George F. Earl Lecture, Off-Campus Project Festival of Places “Take a Right at the Brown Dog” SUNY-ESF Department of Landscape Architecture, Syracuse, NY. 2020.
