About @ The Urban Landscape Lab

About the Urban Landscape Lab.

An inter-disciplinary applied research group at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, & Preservation focused on the role of design in urban ecosystems.

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The Urban Landscape Lab is dedicated to affecting positive social and ecological change in the joint built-natural environment. We study cities as places in which ecological processes and urban systems have a complex range of influences upon species diversity, climate change, and social equity. Our projects bring together a wide range of disciplines – architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, preservation, civil engineering, conservation biology, economics, climate, public health, and community-based advocacy – to connect experimental research methods of the academic setting to practices embedded in New York City and beyond. If you are interested in working with us, please get in touch.

Directors

Kate Orff

Founder & Director, Urban Landscape Lab

Kate Orff is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, and Founder Co-Director of the Urban Landscape Lab where she leads studios and seminars that integrate the earth sciences into the design curriculum. Kate is also a registered Landscape Architect and active design practitioner. Her office, SCAPE, has won local and national design awards and is working on 7 active projects for the City of New York, a waterfront park for The State of New Jersey, the LEED platinum Ford Calumet Environmental Center in Chicago, and environmental education centers in Greenville, SC, and in the Catskills for the NY State DEC. She was named a Dwell Magazine ‘Design Leader’ and H&G’s 50 For the Future of Design and received a 2008 National ASLA award in the Communications Category. Kate received a B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia in 1993 and an MLA from Harvard University. contact

Janette Kim

Director, Urban Landscape Lab

Janette Kim is an architectural designer and educator based in New York City. She is principal of All of the Above, an architectural research and design practice, and teaches at Barnard College and Columbia University GSAPP, where she is director of the Urban Landscape Lab. Kim’s practice, research, and teaching focus on the construction of ecologies in relationship to representations of public identity, opinion, and debate. Her work has been published by Artforum, Architectural Record, and Volume, and exhibited at Artists Space and Storefront for Art and Architecture, among others. As partner of Town/Kim studio, Kim was selected as the designer of the AIDS Memorial in San Francisco, and has been awarded by the Sudapan Competition, Pamphlet Architecture, and the Shinkenchiku Residential Competition. She holds a Masters of Architecture from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University. contact

Research & Design Associates

Lisa Ekle

Lisa Ekle is a Master of Architecture candidate at Columbia University GSAPP. Lisa has worked on podcasts, the Queens Arts Express issue map, research, and drawings for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in the summer and fall of 2009. contact

Robin Fitzgerald-Green

Robin Fitzgerald-Green is a Master of Architecture candidate at Columbia University GSAPP. He has worked on podcasts, the Queens Arts Express issue map and research in the summer and fall of 2009. contact

Steven Garcia

Steven Garcia received his Master of Architecture at Columbia University GSAPP in 2009. He has worked on installation design and production for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in the fall of 2009. contact

Helen Kongsgaard

Helen Kongsgaard is a designer based in New York City, who addresses urban, landscape and experimental media. She organizes school partnerships, exhibitions and publications for Urban Landscape Lab and pilots outreach for Safari 7. After earning a B.A. from St. John’s College in Philosophy and the History of Science, Helen graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she trained in Visual Culture. contact

Sayli Korgaonkar

Sayli Korgaonkar received her B.A. with a major in Architecture at Columbia University in 2009. She has worked on research for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in the summer and fall of 2009, and is was a podcast author as a students in a seminar on urban ecology at the Barnard and Columbia Colleges Architecture Program. contact

Soohyun Park

Soohyun Park received her B.S. in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 2007. She has worked on drawings for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in fall of 2009. contact

Jonathan Payne

Jonathan Payne graduated from Columbia University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts and departmental honors in architecture. Professional experience in architecture has included internships at design firms as well as contributions to exhibits, museum tours, and academic research in drawing and spatial representation. While a student at Columbia, he also studied cello at the Juilliard School and explored a variety of subjects linking architecture and music. An essay resulting from that research, “Xenakis, Cage, and the Architecture of Music,” will be published in The Norton Pocketbook of Writing by Students in 2010. contact

Jonathan Pettibone

Jonathan Pettibone is an architectural and urban designer based in Brooklyn, New York. He has worked on drawings for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in Fall of 2009. Currently Jonathan holds the position of Designer at Clinton Hill Design Build in Brooklyn, NY. Previously he collaborated with TUG Studio on the Thai Exhibition at the ICFF and the Fancy Food Show held at the Javitts Convention Center in NYC. Jonathan received a MSAUD from Columbia University and a BARCH degree from Wentworth Institute of Technology. His research and design work for the Dongdaemun district in Seoul, South Korea is featured in Columbia University’s publication Abstract v.05-06. contact

Evan Sharp

Evan Sharp is a Masters of Architecture Candidate at Columbia University’s GSAPP and also the Principal and Creative Lead of HeaderFooter Design, LLC. He received a BA in History from the University of Chicago and a Diploma in Alternative Architecture & Design from Archeworks. Previously, he was Lead Interface and Information Designer at Catylist Real Estate Software, a national commercial real estate listing and marketing software company, and before that a Business Consultant and Information Designer working in City Hall for the City of Chicago. Evan has worked on the the Queens Arts Express issue map, drawings and research in the summer and fall of 2009. Evan is the designer of the ULL and Safari 7 website, and the founder of the Urban Landscape Lab Encyclopedia. contact

Gena Wirth

Gena Wirth received her MUP and MLA at Harvard University GSD in 2009. She has coordinated, researched, and produced drawings for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in fall of 2009. contact

Christina Nguyen, Christian Prasch, Inbar Kishoni

Queens Arts Express Volunteers

Partners & Collaborators

Photograph of Glen Cummings

Glen Cummings

Partner, MTWTF

Glen Cummings is a partner at MTWTF, a interdisciplinary graphic design studio in Lower Manhattan that collaborates with other disciplines, such as architecture, fashion and urban planning, to create identities, environments, products and publications. Glen has been a lecturer in Graphic Design at Yale University since 2002. His work has been awarded and published by the American Institute of Architects, The American Institute of Graphic Designers among others. contact

Jordan Carver

Research & Design Associate, MTWTF

Jordan Carver is a Masters of Architecture and Urban Planning candidate at Columbia University’s GSAPP and founder of Experiments in Architecture and Research, a multidisciplinary design studio. He is an assistant editor for ABSTRACT, the yearly compendium of student work, and a teaching assistant for the GSAPP Introduction to Architecture Summer program. Previously Jordan was a graphic designer working in Brooklyn and Denver and an adjunct professor and critic at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. Jordan has worked on installation design and fabrication for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in the summer and fall of 2009. contact

Susan Choe

Research & Design Associate, MTWTF

Susan Choe is a Master of Architecture candidate at Columbia University GSAPP. Suan has worked on installation design and fabrication for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in the fall of 2009. contact

Eliza Dzik

Research & Design Associate, MTWTF

contact

Kathryn Hotler

Research & Design Associate, MTWTF

Kathryn Hotler has worked on installation design and presentation materials for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in the summer of 2009. contact

Jenny Noguchi

Research & Design Associate, MTWTF

Jenny Noguchi has worked on installation design and presentation materials for the Safari 7 Reading Room at Studio X in the summer of 2009. She is a freelance graphic designer based in New York and has worked for several publications including Print and Picture. contact

Photograph of Gavin Browning

Gavin Browning

Programming Coordinator of Studio-X

Gavin Browning holds a BA in English from The New School University and a MS in urban planning from Columbia University. His writing has appeared in artonpaper, The Brooklyn Rail, loud paper, Time Out New York, Village Voice, Volume, Urban China and elsewhere. Previously, he worked for the publishing houses Verso, The New Press and Metropolis Books. contact

Photograph of Gavin Browning

Erik Carver

principal Erik Carver Design

Erik Carver is an architectural designer and artist based in New York City. He has worked individually on residential and institutional design, co-founded collaborative groups—Advanced Architecture, common room, and Seru, and worked for architects Lyn Rice and Laura Kurgan. He teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Erik received a Masters of Architecture from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree from University of California San Diego. Erik co-authored Crisis in Crisis: Biosphere 2’s Contested Ecologies. contact

Photograph of Damon Rich