Early projects

I came to landscape architecture with no background in design or architecture. In high school I majored in physics and French. I always had a pull toward making things, toward art, toward creating, but never really had a structured outlet for it or anyone to teach me. It wasn't until I started my studies that I finally had the chance to actually discover that side of myself.

Early project sketch 1 Early project sketch 2 Early project sketch 3
Early project sketch 6
Early project sketch 4 Early project sketch 5

From the first semester, it felt like everyone around me already knew things I didn't: how to design a space, how to draw it, how to talk about it. I don't know if that was true. Probably it wasn't. But that's how it felt, and it shaped the work I made in the first two years of my studies in ways I can see clearly now.

The projects on this page are from that period. Looking back at them I can see the uncertainty, the searching, the moments where I was trying to speak in a language I was still learning. Some of them I wasn't proud of at the time.

I think what often gets lost in creative education, especially in the early years, is that not knowing yet is the whole point. You're supposed to be confused. You're supposed to make things that don't fully work and figure out why. The pressure to already know, before you've had time to learn, is real, and it shifts your focus from the process to the outcome.

Early project sketch 7 Early project sketch 8 Early project sketch 9
Early project sketch 12
Early project sketch 10 Early project sketch 11

Looking back at those first four projects, some lessons stuck with me about what it actually takes to make a meaningful project:

  • Talking to the people who actually live somewhere tells you things no map or research ever will.
  • Surprising collaborations with people you wouldn't have chosen, and taking inspiration from outside your discipline, can produce the most interesting work.
  • Limiting yourself to an arbitrary design language can open unexpected doors.
  • Learning to navigate a difficult group dynamic is its own skill, and sometimes the hardest part of a project.
  • Doing something small every day: a sketch, a note, a conversation, is what keeps a project alive. Inspiration follows action.

I'm still figuring it out.