Jill Desimini (US)
An associate professor and landscape architect exploring the design possibilities of vacant lots and residual spaces as sites of public amenity and climate justice.
Jill Desimini is a landscape architect, program director, and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Connecticut. Desmini’s work focuses the critical intersection of social and climatic threats over time, to identify potentials for land reform to spread wealth and enable reciprocal human and non-human relationships.
Her projects address abandoned landscapes and devalued property, land banking, wildness in cities, climate adaptation, non-linear models of time, cartographic methods, alternative narratives, and data generation.
She is the author of Cyclical City: Five Stories of Urban Transformation (UVA Press, 2022), From Fallow: 100 Ideas for Abandoned Urban Landscapes, (ORO 2019) and co-author of Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary (PAP 2016). Previously, Desmini was an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked at Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, Wallace, Roberts, and Todd, KieranTimberlake, and the City of New York.
How does the theme of Common Interests resonate with you and your work?
I love cities and, after studying them and their wonderful complexity in college, I knew that I wanted to somehow be involved in the making of public spaces in an urban setting. Thus, I am all about this theme of Common Interests and thinking about how we can involve people in shaping the spaces around them, how we can take what we have abandoned in the past and find value in it for the future, value that transcends capital and profit, and allows us to move away from doing harm.
What are some of your favourite projects that have transformed urban space?
I am drawn to public spaces that invite exploration, that offer juxtaposition, and that are uncanny. I love finding forests in cities that are palimpsests of urban history, like Forest Park in Portland, Oregon, or Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände in Berlin or Allendale Woods in Boston. I also love places in cities where you can feel the landscape open—this is why I am drawn to places where the grid has disintegrated and why I love to think about how to address these spaces ethically without losing their free nature.
Looking ahead, what are some emerging changes or areas of research in landscape architecture that you find exciting?
I find the push towards design organizing, towards co-design, and towards engagement exciting. There has always been this false divide between designs that appeal to designers and those that provide social and ecological benefit, and that false divide is slowly disappearing. I am excited by the range of efforts to address our warming and fracturing world, and by the recognition that we need collective and interdisciplinary approaches to make any difference.
Who are some of your greatest influences in work and life?
I have been inspired by my family, my students, my colleagues, and my teachers, especially those who have helped me to see the world in a new way. My undergraduate thesis advisor Patrick Malone took me to explore abandoned towns in Pennsylvania, and my graduate school professors Anu Mathur, Anita Berrizbeitia, and Jim Corner fostered a love of site exploration that continues to influence how I approach the landscape. They taught me to question, to draw, to be curious, and to reject the status quo. My colleagues Rose Monacella, Rosetta Elkin, Jane Hutton, Peter del Tredici, Danielle Choi, Chris Reed, Charles Waldheim, Emily Wettstein, Sergio Lopez Pineiro, Mariana Fragomeni, Julia Smachylo, Sohyun Park and many others instilled in me the value of collaboration. And my students, past and present, continue to push me to consider more broadly the why, what, how, for, and with whom we design.
What do you hope audiences viewing your presentation at Living Cities Forum come away with?
I hope people come away with the idea that landscapes must evolve, as well as an understanding of what abandonment means, and how being informed and empathetic is a first step towards breaking with the cycles of abandonment. It is time to support the people and landscapes that we have marginalized in order to address our societal and climatic needs with urgency.
Jill Desimini will be presenting at Living Cities Forum 2024 remotely.
