Restorative Environments and Biocultural Design Lab
Team: Laura Musacchio, Christine Flauta, Yinjie Huang, Mingchuan Ma, Charlie Heinz, Scott Spicer, Gloria Vázquez Ibarra, and Chia Xiong
Program: Landscape Architecture
Dr. Musacchio’s research emphasizes how cities, towns, and regions of the world can be more biophilic, biodiverse, sustainable, and resilient by helping people reconnect to the web of life. She specifically focuses on how open space systems can be consciously (re)designed to provide enough suitable spaces for people, biodiversity, habitats, and infrastructure. This issue is a pressing concern because open space systems are key to biophilic design, climate adaptation plans, public health interventions, ecosystem service enhancement, and regional watershed management. Yet, public money to support green space systems is often not a top priority for many cities, towns, states, provinces, and nations.
One of the key questions is: How do people’s experiences of urban nature influence understanding about nature conservation and their relations with plants, wildlife, and water?
Examples of current research projects:
- Finding new ways to integrate biophilic and bio cultural sensations, emotions, thoughts, and meanings into the sustainable design of cities and regions.
- Example project sites include the Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans and High Line in New York City.
Keywords: Human experience of urban natures, biodiversity’s experience of cities, biophilic design, green infrastructure design, rewilding cities, biocultural design, and the web of Life
Funder: The Salovich Fund, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, and The Imagine Fund - Annual Faculty Research Grant
