Margie Ruddick is an internationally known, award-winning landscape designer. For over twenty years, she has been recognized for her pioneering, environmental approach to urban landscape design, forging a design language that integrates ecology, urban planning and culture. She is a finalist for the 2011 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards.

Margie's transformative design for New York’s Queens Plaza has won awards for promoting a new idea of nature in the city, where storm water, wind, sun and habitat merge within an urban infrastructure to create a more sustainable vision of urban life. Her design for the new waterfront at Stapleton, in New York City, brings the harbor and city together in a park with cove and tidal wetlands, catalyzing the revitalization of this historic Staten Island district. Similarly, her work for the Trenton Capital Park restores the connection between the city and the Delaware.

Margie’s international projects include the Shillim Institute and Retreat in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra, India. She remains with this project as a member of the Institute’s board. Margie also traveled to Chengdu, Sichuan, China in 1996 to lead a team designing the Living Water Park, the first ecological park in China, which cleans polluted river water biologically.

In addition to her current teaching position at Princeton, Margie has taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Yale, The University of Pennsylvania, Parsons School of Design, and Schumacher College in England. In addition to the Cooper-Hewitt 2011 honor, her many awards include the 1998 Waterfront Centre Award and the 1999 Places Design Award, for the Living Water Park. Her work has received awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects and the American Institute of Architects.

Margie was selected by the Architectural League of New York for their 2003 Emerging Voices. She received the 2002 Lewis Mumford Award from Architects Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility, as well as the 2006 Rachel Carson Women in Conservation Award from the National Audubon Society, an award that recognizes “visionary women whose contributions, talent, and energy have advanced conservation and environmental education locally and on a global scale.” Margie was named as one of the top ten women in green design by the Green Economy Post in 2010.

Margie was born in Montreal and raised in New York City. She graduated from Bowdoin College and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. She founded and managed her own practice from 1988 until 2004, when she became a partner at the planning and design firm WRT. Since 2007 she has worked on projects independently, in addition to writing, lecturing and teaching. Her forthcoming book is What Are We Doing Here Anyway? Adventures in Sustainable Design.

Please visit margieruddick.com for more information or follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Photo credit: Jack Ramsdale