Susannah Drake delivered the MLA Lecture in S. R. Crown Hall as part of the Fall 2015 Dean's Lecture Series. The lecture is titled "WPA 2.0: Beauty, Economics, Politics, Ecology and creation of 21st Century Public Infrastructure".
Susannah is the founding principal of Dlandstudio architecture + landscape architecture pllc. As one of very few designers of her generation with professional design qualifications in Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Susannah paved the way for more synthetic thinking about urban ecological infrastructure and was recently described as one of New York’s most promising emerging designers by New York.com. The NY Center for Architecture awarded DLANDstudio its 2014 New Practices New York award.In 2013 she was awarded the National AIA Young Architects Award, Fellowship in the ASLA and the firm was recognized as a NY Architectural League Emerging Voice. Susannah is currently the Urban Design Fellow for the Design Trust for Public Space, Under the Elevated project. In 2015 she was part of the resource team for the Mayors Institute on City Design. Susannah is a currrent member of the United States Department of State Bureau of Overseas Building Operations Advisory Group.
The firm received city, state, national and international design awards from the AIA, ASLA, BSA, and ChicagoAthenaeum among others. With grants from foundations and public agencies DLANDstudio redesigns underutilized infrastructure corridors for storm water capture, climate resilience and park development. The firms work has been exhibited widely and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum.
Susannah has taught at Harvard, Syracuse, Washington University in Saint Louis, City College of NY, the Cooper Union and was the Cejas Scholar at Florida International University in 2014. Susannah received a Bachelor’s of Arts from Dartmouth College and Master in Architecture and Master in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard University GSD. She is a registered architect and registered landscape architect.