Trained as a landscape architect and industrial designer, Zaneta Hong’s teaching and research centers on material ecologies and sustainable design practices. From her experiences at the Harvard GSD Materials Collection – one of the first academic material collections – to UT Austin’s Materials Resource Center – one of the largest academic material collections – she has developed a pedagogy and research agenda that forwards materials innovation and design exploration through critical engagement, spatial knowledge, alongside profound empathy and care with our shared built and social environments.
Zaneta was awarded the 2024 Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Excellence in Teaching Award, 2018-19 Garden Club of America Rome Prize Fellowship, MacDowell Fellowship, 2013-14 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellowship, and Certificate of Teaching Excellence by the Harvard University Derek Bok Center. Her work has been recognized by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and Environmental Design Research Association; and her writing has appeared in several publications including Studio Ecologies: Design Landscape Architectural Education for Unpredictable Futures; Conceptual Landscapes: Fundamentals in the Beginning Design Process; Representing Landscapes: Analogue; Innovations in Landscape Architecture; Living Systems: Innovative Materials & Technologies for Landscape Architecture, International Journal of Interior Architecture & Spatial Design, and the Journal of Landscape Architecture.
More recently, Zaneta has been exploring edible ecologies and foodways through the lens of landscapes of extraction – from productive fields to domestic kitchens – and artifacts of cultural (re)production; investigating how humans, and those in the creative design practices, have deeply transformed the Earth’s surface and its interconnected ecologies. From the scale and operations of objects to systems, her work becomes a visual narrative that ultimately intends to promote a future of healthy communities and planetary health. In addition to her teaching and writing, Zaneta is the Co-Director for the Material Propositions Lab and a Research & Design Consultant for GA Collaborative, a multi-disciplinary practice that specializes in design equity and sustainable, affordable construction in East Africa and the U.S.
Selected Publications
- “Edible Ecologies” in Studio Ecologies: Designing Landscape Architectural Education for Unpredictable Futures. Edited by Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane. Routledge; Taylor & Francis, 2021.
- “Modeling Ideas: Landscapes as Representational Systems” in Representing Landscapes: Analogue. Edited by Nadia Amoroso. Routledge; Taylor & Francis, 2019.
- Platform 8: An Index of Design and Research, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design & Actar Publishers, 2016.
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