DANIELLE N. CHOI

Danielle N. Choi is a landscape architect, writer, and educator. Her research explores landscape design as a cultural practice that brings technology, infrastructure, and ecology into dialogue with public life. She is an associate professor of landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and a member of the Boston Public Design Commission. Before joining the GSD, Choi practiced in landscape architecture studios in New York City and Berlin.


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Is Landscape Labor?

Landscape is . . . !
Gareth Doherty and Charles Waldheim, eds.

2025

Category: Publications




“Working landscapes” convert natural matter into human provisions and locally maintain environmental life support systems. “Worked landscapes” highlight the human labor embedded in sites through the ongoing, deliberate, and coordinated efforts of designers and non-professionals alike. Drawing on philosopher Hannah Arendt’s distinctions between labor and work—to harness natural processes for human use and to continuously renew and reinvent these relationships through deliberate human action—the chapter argues for a synthesis of biological needs (to make a living) and cultural desire (to make a life).  
Site Credit: August Sklar