LAF Fellow Spotlight: Designing for Circularity and Preservation
As an American landscape architect based in Paris France, Ilana Cohen has experienced firsthand the importance of adapting across cultures, disciplines, and regions. Ilana's longstanding interest in urban agriculture, together with an internship focused on environmental law, propelled her toward a career in landscape architecture which she has actively practiced for the past 15 years. The disciple brings together her interests in ecology, environmental issues, urban areas, and art, while giving her a practical way to engage in advocacy and activism through an ecological lens.
For Ilana, environmental justice and social justice within her work are inseparable. She believes landscape architects are important contributors to climate adaptation because the practice can help demonstrate the value of nature-based solutions. “Environmental justice and social justice—it all goes hand in hand, and there’s so much change that needs to happen. As landscape architects, we have a really valuable role to play in how landscapes are constructed; in making cities more permeable, and in making cities cooler. We can show how nature-based solutions may not only alleviate, but help us adapt to the chaos that we currently live in.”
The combination of interest and professional experience inspired her to apply for LAF's Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership and directs the foundation for her project A Roadmap to Reuse: Case Studies in Circular Landscape Policy and Logistics. Ilana's fellowship project explores how the implementation of circular economies can inform site design and development while preserving the ecosystems embedded in those places and reutilizing materials to reduce the need for further resource extraction. Her research asks how landscape architects can make thoughtful, resource-conscious design decisions without sacrificing cultural and material stability. What infrastructures can be implemented to create a circular construction material economy within landscape architecture? “Thinking more about circular economy, more frugal design decisions—how do we change the way we practice so that we’re able to make places better, but in a way that doesn’t have a huge material cost and in a way that helps preserve the heritage of sites and the material heritage of the places where we are.”
At this stage of the fellowship, Ilana is focused on understanding the guidelines and laws that are shaping France's construction ecosystem, where the circular economy is becoming increasingly robust. She is examining the roles of the people and institutions that develop the policies and legislation governing material use. Her research includes reviewing relevant regulations, analyzing case studies, visiting project sites, and meeting with stakeholders who are driving how things are done. Through this work, Ilana is identifying the practices and methods that can be synthesized, references, and shared as a model for landscape architecture projects in North America as well as across different cultural and geographic contexts. “What are the lessons that can be learned? It’s about sharing information, engaging people, and helping create cross-cultural links.”
Ilana hopes to continue exploring this subject after the year-long fellowship ends, as she continually encounters new findings and initiatives that expand the possibilities of more circular, context-sensitive landscape architecture practices. She’s excited for a future where landscape architects are considered and included in the conversation for nature-based infrastructure. “There’s a lot that’s exciting in the future of the field. We have a lot to offer, but we’re not always invited to the table… I hope that we can be present and work in collaboration with engineers and policy makers and scientist to push the needle forward as much as we can.”
