Kate Orff is a landscape architect and founding director of SCAPE, a Manhattan-based urban design and landscape architecture firm. After graduating with distinction from the University of Virginia, Kate earned a master's degree in Landscape Architecture from Harvard's Graduate School of Design. In 1996, she was a member of the small research group focused on the urbanization of the Pearl River Delta, led by architect Rem Koolhaas, which became the first case study in Harvard's internationally recognized Project on the City. Kate later worked in urban planning and landscape architecture for Hargreaves Associates and OMA/AMO.
Kate is also an associate professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she teaches graduate design studies and interdisciplinary seminars focused on sustainable development, biodiversity, and community-based change at Columbia University. She is co-author of Petrochemical America (Aperture Foundation, 2012) and co-editor of Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park (Princeton, 2011). Her essays have appeared in The Great Leap Forward, Waterfront Visions, Volume, Land Forum, and other books and journals. Kate was named a United States Artist in 2012, a National Academician in 2013, one of H&G's "50 for the Future of Design," a "Design Leader" in Dwell Magazine, and featured as one of "Front Runners: 25 Young Designers Leading the Pack" in Azure Magazine. She lectures throughout the US and abroad on the topic of the urban landscape and new paradigms of thinking that collaborate and design for the Anthropocene era.
Her work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, National Geographic, The Economist, The New York Times, and New York Magazine, as well as architecture and planning publications like Metropolis, Dwell, Azure, Landscape Architecture Magazine, LA China, and many others. She has been interviewed on National Public Radio, NY1, Bloomberg News, and the Brian Lehrer Show.
