The Maeder-York Family Fellowship in Landscape Studies at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum recognizes emerging design talent in the landscape disciplines, and supports experimentation, research, and achievement in design through landscape.

Michael Ezban was recently selected as the 2014 Maeder-York Family Fellow in Landscape Studies by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Ezban's proposal, "Landscapes of Aquaculture," garnered him the honor. He will be in residence at the museum from June through August 2014.

According to Charles Waldheim, the museum's Ruettgers consulting curator of landscape, "Landscapes of Aquaculture will attempt to develop a theoretical and historical framework for the fish farm as a landscape typology, engaging artists, historians, designers, theorists, and the general public in a dialogue on aesthetic perceptions of agricultural space, productive urban landscapes, waste management strategies, and ecological infrastructure."

A landscape designer and registered architect, Ezban is currently a principal at VanderGoot Ezban Studio, a research and design practice based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He also teaches architecture at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.

He holds a Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he received the 2013 Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship. He also holds a Masters Degree in Architecture with distinction from the University of Michigan.

His writing and design work explores economies and ecologies connected to waste landscapes. "I am looking forward to productive summer months at the museum," Ezban stated.

The fellowship program was created in 2012 to recognize emerging design talent in the landscape disciplines; support experimentation, research, and achievement in design through landscape; identify work embodying landscape as a medium of design for the public realm; and grow disciplinary and professional capacity within landscape architecture.

Visit www.gardnermuseum.org/landscape for more information.