Growth and Structure of Cities Barbara Miller Lane Lecture

Thaisa Way FASLA, FAAR, RAAR, (BS UC Berkeley, M’ArchH UVa, PhD Cornell University) is the Director for Garden & Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a Harvard University research institution located in Washington DC, where she also serves as PI for a Mellon Urban Humanities Initiative, “Democracy and the Urban Landscape: Race, Identity, and Difference”. She teaches at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University and is Professor Emerita in Landscape Architecture in the College of Built Environments, University of Washington where she taught history, design, and theory for 15 years. Dr.Way was awarded the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in 2016 and served as the Mercedes Bass Scholar at the AAR in 2023. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and serves on the CEO Roundtable, the Society of Architectural Historians Board of Directors, and as the leader of the Dean’s Equity and Inclusion Initiative that engages 45 design schools to mentor early career BIPoC faculty. Dr. Way served as the founding Director of Urban@UW, an initiative of the University of Washington. Her publications foreground questions of history, gender, and shaping the landscape. Her book, Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design (UVa Press, 2009/213) was awarded the J.B. Jackson Book Award. Her book From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design: the Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag (UW Press 2015) explores the narrative of post-industrial cities and practices of landscape architecture. She co-edited with Ken Yocom, Ben Spencer, and Jeff Hou Now Urbanism: The Future City is Here (Routledge 2014). River Cities/ City Rivers (Harvard Press 2018) is a collection of essays contributing to urban and environmental history. Her book GGN 1999-2018 (Timber Press, 2018) is a foray into descriptions of design as a process. Her most recent books include the volume co-edited with Eric Avila, Segregation and Resistance in the Urban Landscape and the collected essays in the volume Garden as Art: Beatrix Farrand at Dumbarton Oaks. Dr. Way seeks to challenge the canon of landscape architecture to engage with the inscriptions of race, gender, and class on the profession, practice, and pedagogy of the field. Reception following lecture, London Room, Old Library.