Hasta La Ideas

Design is about problem-solving, but to some extent we’re constrained in what problems we can solve by the boxes our profession places us in. Few of us have the juice to enact widespread control over every aspect of a project. As a result, some of us learn to know “our place,” which is not necessarily a pejorative; some can accomplish amazing things within tight constraints. But others start blurring the boundaries between disciplines in an effort to effect holistic change.

Susannah Drake falls in that latter category. In this quick but informative chat, the dlandstudio founder explains how she realized she’d have to expand from architecture into landscape architecture to enact the changes she wanted to see—and that the Gowanus community in Brooklyn, home to a particuarly polluted and flood-prone canal, desperately needed.

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