Kat Shiffler

Paths to Public Practice

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Left to right: Kat Shiffler, Associate ASLA, Matt Boehner, PLA, ASLA, and Maria Debye Saxinger, ASLA

Public Practice Landscape Architects Spotlight

Last month, ASLA released an online guide outlining 10 distinctive aspects of public practice work, providing an overview of public practice landscape architecture. Its mission is to design, implement, and manage functional, liveable, safe, and attractive places for the public. These spaces are often developed with a larger social goal in mind.

Public practice, including non-profit and governmental work, offers unique opportunities and challenges for practitioners. Less than ten percent of ASLA’s membership identify as public practitioners. They work for local, state, and federal government agencies, universities and colleges, transit agencies, or parks and arboreta. Many of these ASLA members have found their way to public practice after years in private practice. They seek to have an impact on public spaces for the common good.

To help illustrate this landscape architecture practice type, we are releasing a handful of profiles of public practice landscape architects. This first installment includes:

Kat Shiffler, Associate ASLA
Landscape Architect
Rivers, Trails & Conservation Assistance Program, National Park Service

Matt Boehner, PLA, ASLA
Senior Planner / Landscape Architect
Columbia Parks & Recreation

Maria Debye Saxinger, ASLA
PROS Master Plan Manager | Planning, Design, and Construction Excellence Division
Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation, and Open Spaces (PROS)

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Therapeutic Garden Design in Chile

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by Kat Shiffler, Student ASLA

Watercolor sketch of a hospital's therapeutic garden
The Jacarandá Garden at San Borja Arriarán, a public hospital in Santiago. / image: Kat Shiffler

I was drawn to landscape architecture out of a specific desire to create healthcare environments that help people heal. As I finish my second year of graduate school at the University of Michigan, I find myself working from an improvised home office instead of the design studio. My desk looks out upon a modest park, where I see record numbers of people walking, running, and sitting—absorbing the benefits of urban greenspace in these anxious times. Today, the universal importance of therapeutic design is thrown into high relief as the whole world is transformed into one big waiting room.

In December, I traveled to Chile to check out some inspirational healthcare gardens and meet with staff from Fundación Cosmos, a Santiago-based NGO that focuses on the ecological and socially sustainable development of parks. I interviewed the foundation’s principals on their work, philosophy, and the state of the landscape architecture profession in Chile, and am sharing the conversation, with my translation into English, here on The Field.

What inspires you to do this work?

We are inspired to live in harmony with the environment, conscious of our interdependence with all living beings and our responsibility for the protection of ecological integrity which sustains life on earth. This is our vision as a foundation.

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