Kate Orff

Kate is the Founder of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design firm with offices in New York City and New Orleans. Kate focuses on retooling the practice of landscape architecture relative to uncertainty of climate change and fostering social life which she has explored through publications, activism, research, and built works. She is known for leading complex, creative, and collaborative work processes that advance broad environmental and social prerogatives. Kate was awarded the MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Grant in 2017, the first given in the field of Landscape Architecture. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia with Distinction and earned a Master in Landscape Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Kate is also the Director of Columbia University GSAPP’s Urban Design Program.