Kate Orff is founding principal of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design practice with offices in New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Since founding SCAPE in 2007, she focuses on retooling the practice of landscape architecture relative to the uncertainty of climate change and creating spaces to foster social life. Orff is also director of the Urban Design Program, co-director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes, and a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2017, she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the first given in the field of landscape architecture. Orff sits on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on Accelerating Climate Action, Urban Ocean Lab’s advisory board, and the American Society of Landscape Architects Council of Fellows.
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Regenerative ocean farming not only delivers nutritious seafood; it can provide dietary supplements for livestock, ingredients for cosmetics, alternatives to plastics, and lot...
In Miami and New York—cities famous for great design—underwater sculptures and creative landscape architecture could protect buildings from the next big flood, and protect loc...
Coastal Louisiana is in crisis. Since the 1930s, the state has lost more than 2,000 square miles of land. Every 100 minutes, a football field of coastal land disappears into o...
What is the role of design in addressing climate change and social fragmentation? Landscape architect Kate Orff of SCAPE explores how to generate new forms of ecological citiz...