Activ-ISM: Jeff Hou

As part of raising consciousness about design justice, this semester the Department of Landscape Architecture devotes its lecture series (Activ-ISM) to activist practices and community engagement. 

Jeff Hou is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Adjunct Professor in Architecture and Urban Design & Planning at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. His work focuses on community design, design activism, public space and democracy, and transcultural placemaking. In a career that spans across the Pacific, he has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, and fishers in Taiwan, neighborhood residents in Japan, villagers in China, and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in North American cities, in projects ranging from conservation of wildlife habitats to rebuilding of indigenous villages and design of neighborhood parks and streetscapes. He is a recipient of the 2012 and 2010 Places Book Award for Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (2010) and Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Seattle’s Urban Community Gardens (2009). Learn more about Hou: http://larch.be.uw.edu/people/jeff-hou/