Ignacio Bunster-Ossa

Ignacio F. Bunster-Ossa is a nationally and internationally recognized landscape architect with long-standing practice in the design of urban places. Among noted projects are the Southwest Brooklyn Framework, a study seeking to integrate sea-level rise, social equity and sustainable development measures to the future of the SW Brooklyn waterfront; the Santa Monica’s Palisades Park and Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles, a landmark project in the integration of public art; and the Steel Stacks Arts and Cultural Campus and Hoover-Mason Trestle in Bethlehem, PA, a public realm design highlighting industrial artefacture, meriting the ULI Global Award of Excellence and Ruddy Brunner Award. Ignacio is the author of Green Infrastructure: a Landscape Approach (with David Rouse); and Reconsidering Ian McHarg: the Future of Urban Ecology, published by Planners Press in 2013 and 2014, respectively. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami (FL), a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Loeb Fellowship in Environmental Studies from Harvard University. Prior to joining AECOM in 2015 Ignacio was a Principal at Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC.

Statement:
The McHarg Center stands at the intersection of cities and the natural environment. As McHarg himself argued, the Center challenges the idea that we can live in ignorance of the effects of human toil upon other forms of life but also, and as important, upon the ecological systems that support our own lives. The state of the planet today demands a fight against such ignorance, through research, learning and activism.  I cannot think of a more responsible association in support of the practice of landscape architecture.