Studio Kongsgaard establishes a practice in San Francisco to service studies on the West Coast. Pictured here is the Presidio from the Headlands and the entrance to the San Francisco Bay, among the only remaining soft shorelines in a city where most of the water's edge has been reclaimed.
The Plum Island dune restoration pilot project opens to the public. The related habitat management plan and environmental assessment for the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge is open for public comment through October. Please share your input.
Helen presents on the urbanism of the Tijuana River Valley for the AA Visiting School. The workshop explores the cartographic and scenographic methods through which we may grasp the complexity of transborder landscapes in a limited encounter.
Helen workshops ongoing research on urban form and bioclimate and the annual Caltech remote sensing science and applications team meeting. The workshop explores the use of earth observation in urban planning and design practice.
The American Society of Landscape Architects releases its first Climate Action Plan (2022-25), guided by a committee on which Helen served over the past three years as an inaugural member. Join us at the annual meeting in San Francisco in November to discuss our recommendations for the profession.
The Tomales Bay living shoreline breaks ground! The project negotiates a small and complex site on the eastern shore of Tomales Bay, California.
The Studio is shortlisted for a grant to support ongoing research, grounded in historical ecology, on the conservation (and critical adaptation) of Napa Valley in response to recent wildfires.
This project considers Napa Valley as an agricultural region beset with wildfires and in urgent need of design attention. It draws on the historical ecology of the region to consider how the valley evolved over time from a pre-colonial landscape managed, intentionally, with fire to an agricultural region where microclimates and soils are paramount. It further examines how the more recent history of agricultural and urban development (and its attendant land use patterns) disrupts the landscape mosaic and its historic fire regimes. Through a design research methodology typical of landscape architecture, the project examines the vulnerabilities inherent in the landscape itself to show how a problem (often understood merely as a devastating situation over which we have no influence) is, in fact, a product of how we live. In short, it argues that the valley’s ecological resilience, or lack thereof, stems from how we collectively inhabit and manage it.
Helen presents research at the 16th International Summit on Sustainability in Santiago, Chile, in January. The panel focuses on urbanization and geological instability. Our collaborators, scientists at the California Geological Survey, will also present. The event is hosted by UC Chile Architecture, Urban Design, and Urban Studies.
Helen teaches an advanced topics studio at the University of California, Los Angeles, as a visiting professor in Winter/Spring 2020. The studio examines adaptive strategies for climate equity in the City of Los Angeles with attention to the public realm, landscape, and urban form. The studio inverts the scientific paradigm of climate adaptation as a practice of systemic adjustment within socio-ecological systems to consider ground-up approaches to mitigate urban heat events through adaptations of form and material within the built environment. Thus, it clearly locates adaptative practice in the realm of architecture and urban design. The course is offered by the School of Architecture and Design and open to MArch and MURP students by lottery enrollment.
Helen lectures at the American Institute of Architects annual meeting in Nevada in June. The panel explores the evolving role of design within the increasingly transdisciplinary fields of knowledge and inquiry centered on the climate crisis. Collaborating practitioners in the allied fields of landscape, architecture, and engineering will join us for the discussion.
Helen lectures at the American Society of Landscape Architects annual meeting in Philadelphia in October. The talk considers evolving approaches to natural and cultural resource management in the context of a changing climate and their influence on the design disciplines and professions.
Helen is appointed Assistant Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design where, since 2017, she teaches graduate-level design studios, research seminars, and methods courses in the Master of Landscape Architecture degree program.