Faculty
Fuller Initiative Director: Liska Chan
Liska Chan is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture in the College of Design and the Clark Honors College, UO Slow Lab Director, and co-manager of the Overlook Field School. Liska’s research focuses on creative geographical methods and methodologies that cut across landscape architecture, environmental humanities, art, and cultural studies. Her creative practice involves research into and mapping of historical patterns of human settlement and infrastructure that have left both social and physical legacies in the contemporary landscape. An important thread in her creative practice and writing is landscape perception and the deep influences common perceptions and ideals have on how we see and build places. Her creative practice and teaching reference geography, cultural studies, and the role of landscape in the cultural imagination, while being grounded in techniques of drawing, art, and spatial design practices.
Email: chan@uoregon.edu
Lab Director: Michael Geffel
Michael Geffel (terrestrial practice) is a Registered Landscape Architect, Professor of Practice in the Department of Landscape Architecture, and Lab Director of the Fuller Initiative Land Lab. With design research broadly focused on experimental landscapes, Michael’s temporary installations explore the generative capacity of maintenance in the construction of novel ecosystems. This expertise is reflected in his approach to pedagogy, which emphasizes direct material exploration to connect students with the landscape medium. He has been published in Landscape Journal, Kerb, LA+, and Scenario Journal and his maintenance experiments have been featured in Landscape Architecture Magazine, Places Journal, and the Ambiguous Territory Symposium.
Prior to joining the U of O, Michael practiced professionally in the Pacific Northwest, New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and SE Asia, with experience working on public urban landscapes, landscapes on structure, green infrastructure, and regional planning. This experience builds on a previous career in horticulture, restoration ecology, and landscape construction, which culminated in the founding of a design/build.
Email: mgeffel@uoregon.edu
Design Fellow: David Buckley Borden
David is a Visiting Professor within the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Oregon, and Designer-in-Residence at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, where he is spearheading a design-ecology initiative between the Fuller Initiative and the the OSU College of Forestry. Using an accessible, often humorous, combination of art and design, David promotes a shared environmental awareness and heightened cultural value of ecology. David’s work manifests in a variety of forms, ranging from site-specific public art installations in the woods to data-driven cartography in the gallery. His recent work includes projects with the Harvard Forest, Agency Landscape + Planning, Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architects, and Rios.