Worldwide
Tel: 1 212-299-0920
WE ARE LANDSCAPE
Generosity, joy, and perseverance guide our pursuit of beauty and freedom.
Botanical City works through landscape, planning, and urbanism as forms of civic practice. Operating across design, research, teaching, and cultural production, the studio engages cities and territories as living systems shaped by history, labor, climate, and culture, at the intersection of ecology, infrastructure, and public life.
Working across scales and formats, the practice combines research-led design with pedagogical and civic engagement. Projects span urban landscapes, territorial frameworks, exhibitions, publications, and collaborative work with public institutions, universities, and community partners.
Landscape grows freedom, joy, and collective purpose over time by holding space for futures to emerge rather than forcing them into form. It creates the conditions for presence, movement, and shared observation—allowing people to experience what could be.
Botanical City approaches landscape as civic ground, revealing hidden ecologies, supporting collective memory, and enabling more equitable futures.
TEAM
Maria A. Villalobos H.
Founder & Principal
Villalobos is Associate Professor and Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture at IIT, Chicago. She holds a Master in Design Studies from Harvard GSD, and a Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture from the ENSP-Versailles. In 2017, she won the first prize in the Venezuelan Architecture Biennale. It was the first time that a women received such award. Currently, Villalobos serves in the National Association of Minority Landscape Architects and is a member of Dark Matter University. Villalobos is the recipient of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture 2022 Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award.
Nilay Mistry
Principal
Mistry Professor in Practice at IIT, Chicago. He possesses several years of experience indesign practice and teaching in landscape architecture and urban design in the United States, Africa, and Asia. His ongoing research and trans-disciplinary design work explores rooting interventions in public space in readings of cultural identity, urban networks, and landscape flows. Nilay's research on informal settlements and Asian urbanization has been the subject of various publications and design studios, facilitating multiple design/build projects around the world. In Chicago, he leads the landscape transformation of the Lincoln Park Square.
Genesis Ramirez
Senior Designer
Genesis Ramirez is an award-winning architect who graduated summa cum laude from Universidad Rafael Urdaneta in 2015. Her thesis, “Rehabilitation of Maracaibo’s Municipal Cemeteries as Multicultural Public Spaces,” earned her recognition for its sensitivity to natural and heritage landscapes. Genesis is an Senior Designer at Botanical City, where she leads the design and production of landscape and urbanism projects. Her role also involved overseeing workflows, quality and training. She excels in 3D modeling, rendering, work supervision, budgeting, and organizing events, travels, and installations.
Eglee Belandria
Junior Designer
Eglee J. Belandria Rondón is an architect and junior designer with experience in architectural documentation, 3D modeling, and LiDAR-based Scan-to-CAD and Scan-to-BIM workflows. She holds a degree in Architecture from Universidad de Los Andes (2019) and has collaborated with international teams on complex projects, producing as-built documentation, point cloud processing, and detailed drawings and models. Alongside practice, she specializes in visual communication, including architectural illustration, axonometrics, vector graphics, and post-production, combining technical rigor with graphic clarity across architectural, urban, and landscape work in collaborative, research-driven professional environments worldwide, interdisciplinary, contemporary.
Zoila Hernandez
Biology and Botany Advisor
She is a botany and biology educator and researcher with more than 40 years of experience on tropical habitats.
Robert T Wahlen
IT Advisor
He is an IT and marketing expert with more than 25 years of experience focused on digital experiences.
APPROACH
Botanical City works through research-led, place-based design, engaging landscape as ecology, culture, and civic infrastructure. Projects begin with deep reading of land and history and develop through drawing, collaboration, and iterative testing across scales.
Research
Projects begin with close reading of place—its soils, waters, infrastructures, histories, and social conditions. Research is foundational, not supplementary.
Design
Design develops through drawing, mapping, and iterative testing. Representation is used as a tool for thinking, dialogue, and negotiation across disciplines and publics.
Public Life
Design develops through drawing, mapping, and iterative testing. Representation is used as a tool for thinking, dialogue, and negotiation across disciplines and publics.