Zaneta Hong
Design Critic in Landscape Architecture
Gund 509
Zaneta Hong is a landscape architect and industrial designer whose work operates at the intersections of material innovation, ecological systems, and design pedagogy. Grounded in critical inquiry and care, her practice challenges designers to reimagine their relationship to both built and unbuilt environments.
A faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Zaneta has held academic and research positions at Cornell University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Texas at Austin. Her approach to materials research has been shaped by curating two of the field’s most influential archives: the Harvard GSD Materials Collection, one of the first academic material libraries, and UT Austin’s Materials Resource Center, among the largest in the country. These experiences form the foundation of a design pedagogy that integrates material literacy, interdisciplinary experimentation, and cultural critique.
Her contributions to design education and research have been widely recognized. Zaneta is the recipient of the 2024 CELA Excellence in Teaching Award, the Garden Club of America Rome Prize Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship, the Daniel Urban Kiley Fellowship, and Certificate of Teaching Excellence from Harvard’s Derek Bok Center. Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation and recognized by the Environmental Design Research Association, and her writing appears in key 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.
Her current research investigates edible ecologies and foodways as critical frameworks for design – mapping the material and cultural flows that link extractive landscapes to domestic interiors, and tracing the narratives embedded in cultivation, (re)production, and consumption. From objects or infrastructures, her projects synthesize systems thinking, material experimentation, and visual storytelling to envision a more just and regenerative future.
Zaneta is Co-Director of the Material Propositions Lab , and serves as a Research and Design Consultant with GA Collaborative , a multidisciplinary design practice focused on equity, sustainability, and affordable construction across East Africa and the United States.
Her favorite foods – whisky, coffee, kimchee, and oysters – are more than a representation of who she is; they are material artifacts of place, identity, and the entangled ecologies that define our everyday lives.
