2023 Class of Fellows, Kate Kennen, Boston Chapter
Northeastern University, Boston Offshoots, Boston
Kate Kennen has brought the science of phytoremediation-plant-based pollution mitigation-to the landscape architecture profession with her research, publications, speaking, teaching, and practice. Her work in translating, reinterpreting, and disseminating the complicated science of phytotechnologies into understandable principles that can be used by the design practitioner is a significant contribution to the field of landscape architecture over her 25-year career. Her seminal and award-winning book, PHYTO: Principles and Resources for Site Remediation and Landscape Design, coauthored with Niall Kirkwood in 2015, serves as the standard text in the field. She founded her own firm in 2006 dedicated to using the latest science in plant-based pollution mitigation to inform the landscape design work she writes and lectures about. Her firm has received over 20 local and national awards for its productive planting-design-focused work, where spatial and aesthetic qualities of productive vegetation are explored, including prophylactic "plant buffering" typologies for targeted land uses to prevent future contamination. Kate also advances knowledge through her full-time faculty position at Northeastern University in Boston, teaching planting design and core landscape architecture technologies. Kate's contributions as an academic researcher and a practitioner inspire students and conference attendees alike to create productive planting designs locally, nationally, and internationally. Her work is a model for landscape architecture where new ecological plantings set up a framework for an increasingly resilient and connected built environment.
