Kate Orff is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at
Columbia. She is a registered Landscape Architect and active design
practitioner. Her office, SCAPE, has won local and national design awards
and has 7 active projects for public landscapes in the City of New York, a
waterfront park for The State of New Jersey, and Environmental Centers in
Chicago IL, Greenville SC, and the Catskills, NY. One of her primary goals
is to bring integrated, systems-based thinking to sustainable development
studies through the interdisciplinary classroom. She and her students find
design inspiration in derelict landscapes and in the pragmatic demands of
environmental processes such as waste management, recycling, wastewater
treatment, and brownfield remediation. Kate was named a Dwell Magazine
‘Design Leader’ and ‘50 for the Future of Design’ by H&G Magazine. She
received a B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of
Virginia and a Master in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard University
Graduate School of Design.