Sean Burkholder is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University. Prior to joining Cornell, Sean was an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design where he co-founded of the Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab). He is also co-founder of the research and design practice Proof Projects. His practice and research span issues facing coastal landscapes, with a particular focus on lake-based geographies. As a member of the Dredge Research Collaborative, he believes coastal sediments and processes serve as a common thread across many coastal circumstances, whether understood positively or negatively. More specifically, he uses methodologies such as adaptive management, environmental monitoring, speculation, and storytelling to inform positive futures, while leveraging temporality, curiosity, and experimentation as fundamental endeavors of landscape practice. He co-authored his first book, Five Bay Landscapes: Curious Explorations of the Great Lakes Region, with Karen Lutsky, and it was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022. He is currently working on his second book, Lakemaker: Surveys, Stories, and Speculations of Held Water, which will be published by AR+D.
Selected Publications
Forthcoming – Lakemaker: Surveys, Stories and Speculations of Held Water
AR+D Publishers.
2025 – Silo City: Choreographing Botanic Actors in the Post-Industrial Landscape
Sean Burkholder and Jason Kentner, In Paula Horrigan and Thomas Oles (eds).
Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture: Methods, Actions, Tools. Routledge.
2024 – Liminal Lakeshores
In Rob Holmes, Brett Milligan, Gena Wirth.
Silt, Sand, and Slurry. ORO Press.
2023 – The White Ribbon: Mediating erosion and modulating overwash on a Lake Michigan beach ridge plain
Brian Davis Theresa Ruswick, Sean Burkholder. Journal of Landscape Architecture | 2023 – 3.
2023 – The Cottonwood
In Ron Henderson (ed).
30 Trees and Why Landscape Architects Love Them. Birkhauser Press.
2022 – Developing and Monitoring an Innovative NNBF to Nourish a Bay Bar: An Example from the Southeast Shore of Lake Ontario.
Theresa Ruswick, Sean Burkholder, Brian Davis. Journal of Great Lakes Research.
2022 – Five Bay Landscapes: Curious Explorations of the Great Lakes Basin
Sean Burkholder and Karen Lutsky. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2023.
2022 – Landscapes of Time: Toward an Ethic of the Temporal
In Richard Weller (ed)
The Landscape Project. ORO Press.
