Leslie Ryan

Santa Cruz

Leslie Ryan is the lead design-researcher for the Future Garden climate-adaptation projects within the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure, a research and educational center established by Helen and Newton Harrison. She is a registered landscape architect and long-time consultant and collaborator on the Harrisons’ projects. Her former academic positions include the founding Chair of a Master of Landscape Architecture degree program at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design in San Diego, and Visiting Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon where she led design studios focused on eco-cultural well-being of the university campus, speculative relationships between mines and seeds, habitat gardens, and local food production at a range of scales. Leslie is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture awarded by the American Academy in Rome. Her design project while in Rome, “3 Gardens for San Cosimato,” was recognized as a visionary landscape by Landscape Architecture magazine. She received a Master of Environmental Design from Yale University’s School of Architecture where her thesis project was awarded the John Addison Porter Prize as the best work of original scholarship written for a general audience, and a BS in Landscape Architecture from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. Her writings on relationships between art, ethics, and land use practices have been published in Places journal and the Journal of Environmental Philosophy.