Susan Herrington is a Vancouver-based landscape architect. She is a Professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, where she teaches in the Landscape Architecture, Environmental Design, and Architecture programs and served as the chair of Landscape Architecture (2016-2020).
Education
Susan received her Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1991 and her Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in 1986.
Work
Her research focuses on two areas of landscape theory: the role that landscape design plays in creating developmentally supportive outdoor play spaces for children, and how designed landscapes reflect ideas regarding nature and culture.
She has been a Registered Landscape Architect in the State of Connecticut since 1990.
Beginning in 1995, Susan taught at Iowa State University for two years. During her time there, she conducted a research project in the outdoor play yards at the Child Development Laboratory. The research involved collaborating with faculty and graduate students from the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Department of Human Development and Family Studies.
Susan has conducted research with funding from the Graham Foundation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She has also conducted research in Germany with support from the German Academic Exchange, in Boston through a visiting research position at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, in Toronto through Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and as an early career scholar with the UBC Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.
In 2003, she began a five-year study called Outside Criteria, which studies the outdoor play spaces of childcare centers in Vancouver as part of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI)-funded Consortium for Health, Intervention, Learning and Development (CHILD) project.
Susan was also asked to return to the International Garden Festival, "Les Jardins de Metis in Quebec" and brought Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) and Environmental Design (ENDS) students with her in June 2004 to build her garden, "Hip Hop”.[Contemporary Garden Aesthetics, Creations and Interpretations]
She was the President of the Society of Architectural Historians’ Landscape History Chapter from 2011-2013.
She is the author of Serious Fun: The Landscapes of Claude Cormier Landscape (ORO Editions, 2021), Theory in Design (Routledge, 2017), Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape (UVA Press, 2014), and On Landscapes (Routledge, 2009), published as part of Routledge's Thinking in Action Series.
Awards and honors
2020
UBC Killam Faculty Research Prize for 2020
2016
Anne de Fort-Menares Award for her article, “Restoring a Modern Landscape in the Anthropocene: Cornelia Hahn Oberlander,” on the Friedman Residence
2015
John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize for her book Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape (University of Virginia Press, 2014).
2011-13
President of the Society of Architectural Historians’ Landscape History Chapter from 2011-2013.
2010-11
UBC Killam Faculty Fellow.
2004-5
Awarded a UBC TLEF with Rick Kopak of UBC's Library and Information Science for Claude Glass: Creating a Digital Library.
1999
First Place for Research from Places/EDRA (Environmental Design Research Association).
1997
One of five finalists in the international competition to design a memorial for the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Projects
2002 Schoolyard Park: 13-acres international design competition. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Centre for Landscape Research. [Citation].
Select publications
Books
2021 (with Treib, M) Serious Fun: The Landscapes of Claude Cormier
2017 Landscape theory in design
2014 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the modern landscape
2008 On Landscapes
2007 (with Chandra Lesmeister, Jamie Nicholls, and Kate Stefiuk) 7 Cs: An Informational Guide to Young Children’s Outdoor Play Spaces. Vancouver: Westcoast Childcare Resource Centre.
Selected journal articles
2022 Rereading St Ann’s Hill. Journal of Landscape Architecture Volume 17 – Issue 1: 6-21
2017 Profile of Cornelia hahn Oberlander. BC Society of Landscape Architects: Sightlines: June Issue; 16-17