Kate Orff’s activist and visionary work on design for climate dynamics has been shared and developed in collaboration with arts institutions, governments, and scholars worldwide. Since founding the New York-based landscape architecture and urban design firm SCAPE, Kate Orff has advanced projects of all scales: from award-winning, harbor-wide planning efforts and groundbreaking work for the NYC Coastal Protection Plan, to on-the-ground ecological investigations such as mussel pilot installations in the Gowanus Bay. She is the Director of the Urban Design Program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She joined the MacArthur Fellowship Program – Class of 2017, as the first landscape architect in the Foundation’s 36 year history to be honored with the award. Kate’s work bridges design, science, and community participation to redefine the role of the landscape architect in the age of climate change. She is coauthor, with Richard Misrach, of Petrochemical America (2012) and coeditor and author of the book Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park (2011). She lives in Forest Hills, New York.
