Sarah Cowles

Sarah Cowles, Founder and Director at Ruderal

5:00pm PST Friday, April 25th, 2025

Business Rotunda (03-213)

 

Sarah Cowles is the founder and director of Ruderal LLC, alongside Benjamin Hackenberger and Giorgi Nishnianidze. With over 20 years of international experience, her work merges ecological design with cultural and geopolitical contexts, particularly in Georgia. Her projects—such as Arsenal Oasis, the Tbilisi Urban Forest, and the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou—reflect a deep commitment to climate adaptation and regional resilience. A Fulbright Specialist in Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, Cowles has exhibited internationally and published in leading journals. She holds an MLA from Harvard GSD and has taught at USC, Ohio State University, and Sam Fox School.
The presentation introduces Ruderal’s design strategies rooted in “translocality,” which integrates local ecological, cultural, and economic knowledge into global design frameworks. Two primary methods will be discussed: “Grafting into Baseline Conditions,” which engages with historic spatial systems, and “Landscape Lexicon,” a tool to reinterpret and apply cultural and technical landscape knowledge in contemporary contexts.