Kate Orff presented a lecture titled, Toward An Urban Ecology. 

Kate Orff is the Founder of SCAPE. Kate focuses on retooling the practice of landscape architecture relative to uncertainty of climate change and fostering social life which she has explored through publications, activism, research, and projects. She is known for leading complex, creative, and collaborative work processes that advance broad environmental and social prerogatives.

SCAPE reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. A range of participatory and science-based strategies will be depicted through the lens of office work, featuring projects, collaborators, and design methods that advance urban ecological design.

Kate Orff was named a 2012 United States Artist Fellow, an Elle Magazine “Planet Fixer,” and shared SCAPE’s design methodologies at the International TEDWomen Conference in 2010. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia with Distinction and earned a Master in Landscape Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Kate is also the Director of Columbia University GSAPP’s Urban Design Program.