Paola Sturla
Paola Sturla is a lecturer in Landscape Architecture and the 2018/2019 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Urban Planning, Design, and Policy at Politecnico di Milano in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Born and raised in Italy, Paola is a registered “architetto” and “paesaggista.” She is currently a full-time researcher working on the designer’s creative agency to address open-ended problems through the hermeneutic design process, and the potentials and limits of Artificial Intelligence-based tools in such a practice. Before entering academia, she had been practicing internationally in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry in the framework of large scale infrastructure projects. Paola holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture (Politecnico di Milano, 2004), a Master in Architecture (Politecnico di Milano, 2007), and a Master in Landscape Architecture (Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2011).
Craig Douglas
Craig Douglas is a Landscape Architect whose work focuses on innovative techniques and methodologies that explore the agency of representation in landscape architectural design. He is an Assistant Professor in the Landscape Architecture Department at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. His work explores the landscape as a dynamic material process in a constant state of flux through analytical and conceptual approaches integrating drawing, modelling, simulation, and sensing to make visible and reconstitute the landscape as a complex temporal and material manifold of differential space.
His work on ‘Digital Air’ claims air as matter by reconceptualising it as a material that is both corporeal and technological. In resisting conventional forms of definition and representation, air as matter invites the potential of emergence and production to augment our static realities. This material dialectic changes how we perceive and understand the scope of landscape architecture and how we might compose the architecture of our cities and landscapes in which air is identified as a principal agent for design.
The research explores the measuring and mapping of the air as matter oscillating between physical, corporeal, and cultural definitions by redefining it as a landscape of living and living space through atmospheric encounters. This is an investigation and reconceptualization of air as a dynamic, emergent process displaying flows, forces, and forms of change in a constant and unstable state of flux across a range of spatial scales, physical states, and temporal modes. Shifting the perception of air from an immaterial and wholly natural element to a material matter co-created by humans requalifies its significance, highlights the precarious relationship we have with it, and provides ways through which we might reconceptualise air and our relationship with it. ‘Digital Air’ considers the potential to inform new modes of understanding and practice that are relevant to the changes the climate crisis brings by making it possible to respond to projected states of being and to simultaneously consider how we might act through dynamic states of change.
His approach supports informed and innovative responses to the challenges found at the nexus of the social, ecological, and built environment that embrace the spatial, temporal, and material complexity of the landscape. It explores design as an activity of making and as an agent for understanding and responding to the challenges of urbanisation in a rapidly changing world that contributes to the complexity of the contemporary city in the age of climate crisis.
Douglas’ teaching includes the coordination of the Landscape Architecture Core II Design Studio and Representation II courses alongside Option Studios, Seminars, Independent Studies, Core III, and Thesis supervision. He has practised in offices in Australia, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom on complex urban projects and continues to collaborate on projects with practices around the world.
Student Supervision Awards
Housing, politics, climate change, ecology: range of student projects honored with 2018 ASLA Awards
Francesca Benedetto
Francesca Benedetto is a practitioner and an educator.
Her work centers on the interplay between city and nature, envisioning landscapes from both environmental and social perspectives, examining ecological processes, biodiversity, and climate adaptation while always considering the identity and memory of places.
In 2008, Benedetto founded YellowOffice, a landscape architecture, urbanism, and public art international firm based in Milan. The practice explores new typologies of public spaces capable of addressing the challenges of climate change and responding to the needs of diverse communities. Each project seeks to reintroduce an emotional and spiritual connection to the landscape, aiming to define commons that can truly reconnect people with nature.
YellowOffice engages with multiple scales of design, from territorial strategies, urban planning, public spaces, parks, cemeteries, and gardens to pavilions, interiors, and objects, and is regularly involved in projects within the public realm, mostly related to cultural and civic landscapes.
The practice has worked on numerous projects internationally, earning multiple awards. Among recent recognitions is the winning entry in the International Competition for the New European Library of Information and Culture (Nuova BEIC) (Milan, 2022, currently under construction), where the primary landscape intervention is a new forest plaza (Piazza BEIC).
Francesca Benedetto has published in leading design magazines such as San Rocco magazine, contributed essays to books including The Comedy and I in Reading Dante with Images edited by Matthew Collins and Luca Marcozzi, published by Harvey Miller (2026), and produced visual artwork included in publications such as The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill by Antonio Rovaldi, published by Humboldt Books in 2019.
Her work combines design with community engagement and awareness-raising, also through narrative media such as exhibition design, video and documentaries, mapping, and illustration.
And it has been exhibited, among others, at the inaugural Landscape Garden Exhibition at Agliè Castle (Turin, 2023), Omved Gardens (London, 2022), Palazzo Ducale di Urbino (2021–2022), Biennale di Pisa (2021), Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa (2019), Harvard GSD (2018–19), the first Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015), MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (Rome, 2014-12), and the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2014).
Francesca Benedetto has taught and participated in panels and conferences at major universities, including Politecnico di Milano, Cass Cities at London Metropolitan University, University of Limerick, NABA, and IED. In 2014, she coordinated the Master’s in Land Design at IED Cagliari, and in 2015 served as Italian ambassador for IED. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty in the Department of Landscape Architecture.
Francesca Benedetto studied at Politecnico di Milano and Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Since 2009, she has been a licensed member of the Order of Architects, Planners, Landscape Architects, and Conservationists of the Province of Milan.
Steven Handel
Steven Handel studies the potential to restore native plant and animal communities, adding sustainable ecological services, biodiversity, and amenities to the landscape. He has explored pollination, seed dispersal, plant population growth, ecological genetics, and most recently, ecological solutions for urban and heavily degraded lands. In addition to his GSD appointment, he is a Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Rutgers University. Previously, he was a biology professor and director of the Marsh Botanic Garden at Yale University, Visiting Professor at Stockholm University, and Research Scholar at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
Dr. Handel is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow and Certified Senior Ecologist of the Ecological Society of America, and is the Editor of the professional journal Ecological Restoration. In 2007, he was elected an Honorary Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He received the Society for Ecological Restoration’s highest research honor, the Theodore M. Sperry Award, “…for pioneering work in the restoration of urban areas.”
He has been on design teams doing ecological restoration in urban areas, such as the “Rebuild By Design” U.S. HUD competition, Gateway National Park in New York City, Fernbank Forest in Atlanta, Georgia, the Great Falls National Historical Park in NJ, and the Orange County Great Park in California. Recognition for this work includes ASLA Honor Awards for Analysis & Planning (2008 and 2009), for Research (2009 and 2015), and for Communications (2015). Also, the AIA National Honor Award in Regional & Urban Design, and the APA National Planning Excellence Award for Innovation in Regional Planning. His research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the National Park Service, and private foundations. He has published widely in ecological and botanical scientific journals.
Handel received his B.A. from Columbia College in Biology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University in the Field of Ecology and Evolution.
Steven Apfelbaum
Steve Apfelbaum has been a full-time research and consulting ecologist with AES since 1978 when he founded the company. Steve has conducted ecological research projects in most biomes of North America, and since the early 1980s he has been one of the leading consultants in the U.S. in ecological restoration programs. Apfelbaum is trained as an animal and plant ecologist with graduate studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where he earned his MS Degree in Ecological and Biological Sciences in 1978. He has been a scientist in hundreds of field ecological projects and data analysis projects. During his career, Mr. Apfelbaum has authored or co-authored hundreds of technical studies, reports, ecological program plans, restoration plans, and monitoring and compliance reports for research projects and for regulatory program reporting. In recent years he has worked closely with hydrologists to understand landscape-scale hydrologic changes associated with land settlement in the Midwestern U.S. This work has direct application to many hundred millions of acres in North America and elsewhere. Mr. Apfelbaum has also presented results of his study of ecological restoration at hundreds of seminars and courses around the world and is a much sought-after speaker at educational events focusing on ecological restoration, alternative storm water management and conservation development. Apfelbaum’s latest book, “Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land” (Island Press) and his personal account of thirty years of restoring their Wisconsin farm, in “Natures Second Chance” (Beacon press) have received a range of awards, including rave reviews in the New York Times and elsewhere. The later book has been recognized as one of the top ten environmental books of 2009 and also best books for people to personally learn about what they can do to address climate change. Apfelbaum teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design a course on the future of coastal systems on earth, and holds adjunct professorships and lectureships at several other universities.
Katharine Parsons
Katharine C. Parsons is a Lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the GSD. She holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from Rutgers University and has 30 years of experience in coastal waterbird research, management and policy in the U.S. northeast. Since 2011, Kathy has directed Mass Audubon’s Coastal Waterbird Program which works with coastal communities throughout Massachusetts to protect rare birds and their habitats through research, management, and advocacy. Her research interests include the reproductive and foraging ecology of long-legged wading birds, near-shore seabirds, and temperate zone shorebirds. She has studied extensively the ecotoxicology of aquatic birds utilizing estuarine wetlands publishing research articles in Waterbirds, other ornithological publications, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Estuaries, and Journal of Coastal Research. Parsons edited and contributed to special publications of Waterbirds: “Managing Wetlands for Waterbirds: Integrated Approaches” and “Rice and Waterbirds: Science, Management, and Conservation.” She is a member and past-chair of the Executive Council of Waterbird Conservation for the Americas. She is a 30-year member, current Executive Council member, and past-president of the Waterbird Society which publishes the international journal Waterbirds. She has served on numerous graduate student committees and teaches a seminar on coastal ecology at GSD: Changing Natural and Built Coastal Environments.
Charles Waldheim
Charles Waldheim is the John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture, Director of the Office for Urbanization, and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an American-Canadian architect and urbanist. Waldheim’s research examines the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. He is author, editor, or co-editor of numerous books on these subjects, and his writing has been published and translated internationally. Waldheim is recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome; the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Study Centre of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; the Cullinan Chair at Rice University; and the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Michael Van Valkenburgh
Michael R. Van Valkenburgh, Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, Emeritus, has taught at the GSD since 1982. He served as program director from 1987-89 and for a term as chairman of the department from 1991-96.
As founding principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. (MVVA), with offices in New York City and Cambridge, Van Valkenburgh has designed a wide range of project types ranging from intimate gardens to full-scale urban design undertakings. Some of his recent projects include Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City, the Lower Don Lands in Toronto, and the Monk’s Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Most recently, the firm has been commissioned to design the landscape for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago and master plan the 308-acre Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh. MVVA has received numerous design awards, including ASLA Firm of the Year in 2016 and the Brendan Gill Prize from the Municipal Art Society of New York in 2010 for Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is presented annually to the work of art that best captures the spirit and energy of New York City.
Van Valkenburgh was the 2003 recipient of the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Environmental Design, and in 2010 became the second landscape architect in history to receive the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for contributions to architecture as an art. In 2011 he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he is one of only three landscape architects on its roster of members. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the ASLA.
Van Valkenburgh earned a BS in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University and an MLA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2008, Yale University Press published Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates: Reconstructing Urban Landscapes, a book on his firm’s work. Van Valkenburgh’s approach to creating landscapes and public spaces has also been featured in a wide range of publications, most notably Art in America and Harvard Magazine .
Matthew Urbanski
Urbanski teaches courses in plants in design and site ecology. Since 1989, he has worked at the New York office of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, where he is currently a Principal. As lead designer on many of the firm’s large public projects, Urbanski explores the ways in which urban public landscapes interact with other urban forces to enhance and expand the experience of city life.
His latest work involves large-scale urban landscapes, including Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson Park & Boulevard in New York City, and North Grant Park in Chicago. Completed projects include Union Square North, Segment 5 of Hudson River Park, and Teardrop Park in New York City, as well as Hoboken Pier C, Allegheny Riverfront Park, the Vera List Courtyard, the General Mills Corporate Headquarters Entry Landscape, and the Pucker Garden.
Laura Solano
Solano teaches courses in landscape technology. She is a registered landscape architect and Principal of the Cambridge office of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. Laura has been a leading force in many of the firm’s projects including Teardrop Park, Marion Square, Allegheny Riverfront Park, and the Vera List Courtyard. Solano has practiced throughout the United States for Bohn-NBBJ Architects, Sasaki Associates, and Pryor-Geller Schreiber Associates. She has been an instructor at the Arnold Arboretum and a guest lecturer and studio critic at the Boston Architectural Center. She received a BLA from The Ohio State University, where she also taught landscape graphics.