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supporting land stewardship
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We areUrsula Lang and Margot Lystra, two multifaceted designer-scholars with deep experience in researching, teaching, creative practice, and built environments.


We sharea love for the more-than-human living world, multi-disciplinary expertise in place-based practice and research, and career-long commitments to understanding and supporting all the ways that people connect to and care for land.


We founded Living Site because we want to empower people to be better stewards: of the living systems that support them, of the communities in which they live, and of the histories of inhabitation that connect us through time.




Ursula Lang, Ph.D. & M.Arch, is a geographer, educator and community planner, with a background in architecture, biology and anthropology. For the past twenty five years, Ursula has worked at disciplinary intersections through her scholarship, teaching, design, and art practice. As a scholar, Ursula has held research and teaching appointments at the Rhode Island School of Design, University of Glasgow, and the University of Minnesota. Her first book, Living with Yards (2022) examined people’s experiences with everyday landscapes, within the context of urban sustainability. As a designer, Ursula worked for two years at Arkin Tilt Architects in Berkeley, CA, and on various design/build and freelance projects. Ursula earned a Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Minnesota, and a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Anthropology from Swarthmore College. She currently coordinates community-led planning efforts in small rural communities, as a senior staff researcher at the Minnesota Design Center. In addition, Ursula has an active creative practice with current projects including site-based printmaking (Etchlands), an environmental history of public geology across Minnesota (Roadside Geopoetics), and more traditional printmaking. Ursula lives with her family in St Paul, MN. Online she can be found at https://www.ursulalang.net/.



Margot Lystra, Ph.D. & M.L.A., is a landscape historian and instructor of landscape architecture, with a background in landscape architectural design, postmodern dance, nonprofit management, and ecology. Margot has two decades of experience in landscape teaching and practice: guiding others to research living sites and articulate new landscape visions. Most recently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, she has also taught at Université de Montréal, University of Buffalo, Cornell University, California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo, and University of Detroit Mercy. Her writing can be found at the Center for Humans and Nature, Journal of Design History, and Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. As a designer, she has worked for Conger, Moss, Guillard, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, and various San Francisco-based landscape architecture firms. Margot holds a Ph.D. in the History of Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell University, a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Swarthmore College. Margot lives with her family in Ithaca, NY. Her creative and scholarly projects can be found at https://margotlystra.cargo.site/.



We have decades of experience
and refined expertise in landscape-related research, design, visioning and communication.

We guide
people to develop vital and meaningful relationships with sites, in ways that contribute to a more sustainable, just and thriving world.