Her main focus of the lecture was a discussion about how “to enhance the quality of the urban life.” She said she tries to focus on how the human heritage shapes the land and how to build from it.

Tourism, one human aspect that affects landscaping, is a large part of architecture, she said, and it takes skill, experience and the ability to apply creativity to a landscape to deeply respect it and not compromise its original beauty for the most innovative and cutting edge designs. “There’s a lot of historic change going on and we want to preserve it,” O’Donnell said.

The American Society of Landscape Architects’, which O’Donnell is known for expanding, is a big advocate of reinforcing the identity of a place. Landscape architects look to combat homogeneity because if everything looked the same, tourism wouldn’t be as prominent, she said.

She added that villages, boulevards, streets, parks and open spaces all have potential to move away from the simplistic design. Historic, cultural landscapes are valued as global resources. “You have to sustain uniqueness and sustain the values,” O’Donnell said.

Landscape architects often strive to keep the components of a cultural landscape the same and foster the global impacts. O’Donnell said the ASLA has been carbon foot printing and using many different techniques to preserve the landscape so it will emulate the rustic qualities that it did when it was first made hundreds of years ago.

“You are relying on space and design to captivate you so you gain understanding,” O’Donnell said. “The goal is to reshape a commemorative landscape.”

O’Donnell received her master’s degree in landscape architecture and in urban planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a certified planner, has her landscaping license in many states and was inducted as a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects for accomplished works in 1995.

She is most famous for being a leader and expert in the field of historic landscape preservation. She has lobbied Congress for funding national cultural landscape studies.

The ASLA has dealt with more than 400 preservation projects for campuses, museums, institutions, historical sites parks, cemeteries and estates. Some of the projects include the first Camp David and George Washington’s headquarters.