Thaisa Way

Thaisa Way FASLA, FAAR, BS UC Berkeley, M’ArchH UVa, PhD Cornell University is an urban landscape historian teaching and researching history, theory, and design in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the College of Built Environments, University of Washington, Seattle. She was the 2015-2016 Garden Club of America Fellow in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome. Currently on leave from UW, Dr. Way is serving as Director of the Garden & Landscape Studies Program at Dumbarton Oaks, a research institute under the stewardship of the Trustees of Harvard University.

Dr. Way has published and lectured on feminist histories of landscape architecture and public space in cities. Her book, Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design (2009, University of Virginia Press) was awarded the J.B. Jackson Book Award in 2012. A second book, From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design: the Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag (University of Washington Press 2015) explores the narrative of post-industrial cities and the practice of landscape architecture. She has edited two books in urban environmental history and practice including Now Urbanism (Routledge, 2013) with Jeff Hou, Ken Yocom, and Ben Spencer, River Cities/City Rivers (Harvard Press, 2018).  She recently completed two monographs, GGN Landscapes: 1998-2018 (Timber Press, 2018) and Landscape Architect A.E. Bye: Sculpting the Earth, Modern Landscape Design Series (Norton Publishing, forthcoming).

Dr. Way served as Chair of Faculty Senate, UW as well as Chair of the Senate Committee on Planning and Budget from 2016-2019. As a historian she was Chair and Senior Fellow for the Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies  Program (2011-2017), member of the jury for the ASLA professional awards, and has served as a design reviewer, history consultant, and collaborator for numerous projects all with the intention to improve our public realm and build a stronger democracy. She was the founding director of Urban@UW, a coalition of urban researchers and teachers collaboratively addressing complex urban challenges and Chair of Faculty Senate at the University of Washington.

Urban@UW : seeks to build understanding of cities—from people, buildings, infrastructure, and energy to economics, policy, culture, art, and nature—beyond individual topics to dynamically interdependent systems, so that we can holistically design and steward vibrant and welcoming cities in which future generations will thrive.