The Willow Resiliency Project proposes a biomass industry cooperative between rural communities and repatriated indigenous populations of the Lower Missouri River Valley. Hybridized program of production, research, and recreation expand the typology of rural public space and create opportunity for unconventional interactions between people, ecology, and place. The project calls for establishing an interspecies salix biomass crop within the river’s flood zone, and has integrated aspirations of ecological restoration, knowledge production, regional economic sustainability, and the advancement of social equity. When harvested and burned in a low-oxygen environment, willow cuttings are converted to biochar, a soil ameliorant that sequesters carbon, benefits agricultural crop yields and reduces irrigation demands in silt / sand soil profiles. In acknowledgment of the indigenous practice of utilizing fire for landscape management, the annual fire-rite festival marks the beginning of burn season and celebrates the interdependent nature of landscape and rural culture in the Missouri River Valley.

Skid Row gathers a large number of homeless people, and the tents occupy the entire city blocks. These makeshift shelters for the city's homeless are now an almost permanent fixture of the city's landscape, with piles of waste among them, which leads to a huge negative impact on city appearance, residents' commuting, life security, public health and social relations. The governors have published a series of policies to make the city better, but there are no obvious effects.

The project establishes on-site waste disposal and reuse mechanisms, and builds the future homeland, trying to reuse the waste to create accommodation and reform public environment based on existing one-floor parking lot, wasteland, and surrounding buildings. These strategies respond to the problems of tents occupation and waste dumping ingeniously, which also replies to 'zero waste Los Angeles'. In the meanwhile, it provides homeless people with dwellings and job opportunities, restore regional landscapes, and create a benign cycle of diverse social activities to reshape healthy, balanced and sustainable development for urban landscape and social relations sustainably.

Does an antidote to our landscape exist to mend the impairment that was orchestrated by us? Under all the challenges of extreme weather, mass extinctions, severe pollutions - Global authorities are pulling out all the stops, desparately, to hopefully evade the ghastly future. 

Rewilding, a novel eco-centric approach that is promoted across disciplines - to introduce pristine wilderness back into humanity and allow open-ended natural processes to regain dominance with minimal human control, this approach flourishes as a result of marginal farmland abandonment across Europe, has meanwhile sparked debate with farmers who live off the culture-saturated land that historically embraces active management, the predicament between production and environment is never resolved.

Paddock Rewilding investigates a middle ground to mediate and create synergies in two conceptually polarised value systems of heritage landscape and rewilding. Inspired by the indigenous pathway of ‘shifting cultivation’, this project examines how larger territories can be elaborated into a ‘permanently impermanent’ rotational scenario between ‘Rewilding’ and ‘Dewilding’, to offer a possible alternative to envision a balancing and sustainable land management typology.

The largest congregate setting of LA County’s 66,000+ unhoused individuals resides in the streets of Skid Row, an ‘unofficial containment zone’ for homelessness. For as long as it takes to deliver a housing solution, unhoused communities will continue to suffer at the hands of our codified systems of regulations, like the LA Municipal Code (LAMC). Enduring discrimination for their very existence, unhoused individuals must navigate the LAPD’s yearly 14,000+ misdemeanor arrests attributed to ‘quality of life’ violations that prohibit sitting, lying, or sleeping on sidewalks (LAMC§41.18), but to identify as LGBTQIA+ and unhoused means to be doubly discriminated against. LGBTQIA+ individuals (and the 40% of unhoused youths who identify as LGBTQIA+) are further oppressed by hate crimes, threats of physical violence, and tensions that encourage many to conceal their own identities in order to access resources, and survive. This research spatializes the LAMC, designing a survival guide for the unhoused to more safely negotiate our civic spaces, and stake a more dignified claim in a landscape that so strictly governs their ability to even exist.

Mud Gallery is the outcome of a year-long group capstone project that celebrates the beauty and life that could return to the waters of the Washington State Capitol with the restoration of the Deschutes Estuary. Currently the biggest obstacles to restoring the Deschutes Estuary are public perceptions of mud and concerns about the odor and appearance of the estuary at low tide. Mud Gallery takes a year’s worth of our own mud-centered art explorations and transforms them into novel community outreach methods designed to engage the public imagination and get people excited about the mud of a restored Deschutes Estuary.

The United States incarcerates more juveniles than any other nation in the world, with nearly 50,000 minors held in detention centers on any given day. This constitutes a mass incarceration crisis which is in dire need of creative reform and interdisciplinary solutions.

Developing effective rehabilitation programs is central in preventing criminal re-offense and providing a path to a better life for millions of affected Americans. A society which truly values its children should value restorative justice over harsh punishment, especially since youth offenders are particularly vulnerable to entering the cycle of adult incarceration.

This research-based landscape architecture project proposes therapeutic gardening curriculum as a strategy for youth rehabilitation. While prison gardens certainly cannot solve all the problems associated with incarceration, they can significantly alleviate mental stress, build valuable skills, and help youth cope with life inside and outside prison. 

Design that stands for unconditional compassion is powerful. Providing access to nature and green space for every member of society is a fundamental goal of landscape architecture, which includes those who commit crime.