WE EXPLORE

Creativity and trust emerge through movement, traveling, walking, and shared experiences that carefully curate emotional and spatial relationships.

We work through presence. Our practice travels with clients and communities walking streets, crossing territories, sharing meals, time, and uncertainty. Trust is not assumed or accelerated; it is built slowly, through repeated encounters and shared experience. This is how relationships form, and how projects begin.

We curate emotional and spatial experiences as a way of working. Movement, proximity, and attention allow people to feel landscapes before they are drawn to understand rhythm, scale, memory, and care as lived conditions rather than abstract ideas.

Collective discovery is central to this process. We explore how to see: to read land, notice patterns, recognize what is already alive, and understand how space carries culture, labor, and meaning. Seeing together creates common ground. At Botanical City, trust takes root through presence, generosity, and shared authorship over time.

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CITIZENS FELLOWSHIP

The Citizen Fellowship is an initiative that brings together civic leaders, community organizers, practitioners, and public officials to exchange ideas and practices in landscape architecture and urbanism through travel, dialogue, and shared experience.

Founded in 2022 by Grow Greater Englewood, Botanical City, and the Master in Landscape Architecture program at IIT, the fellowship is grounded in the belief that learning happens through presence—by engaging landscapes directly and learning alongside those who shape them.

The program invites committed individuals who play a meaningful role in shaping the built and natural environment, particularly those advancing social and environmental justice within their communities. Fellows travel to carefully selected destinations, where they meet peers, exchange perspectives, and contribute insights across multiple contexts.

Throughout the fellowship, participants work closely with faculty and students, take part in public and internal events, and join a growing network of collaborators committed to equity, care, and long-term excellence. The fellowship is designed not as a one-time experience, but as an expanding ecosystem of collective mentorship and shared authorship.

In 2024, the Citizen Fellowship focused on urban eco-districts and agricultural landscapes, with site-based research and exchanges in Paris, France, developed in collaboration with the French Consulate in Chicago. Fellows shared key insights and research outcomes with one another, strengthening a sustained network of learning, support, and action.