Building/Ground: Making Architect-Landscape Collaboration Actually Work - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Recorded On: 09/18/2026

Landscape architects and architects collaborate on nearly every major project, yet misaligned expectations often limit outcomes. This session explores how clearer understanding of landscape’s strengths—working from the “deep section” upward—can improve collaboration. Through real projects, presenters share practical strategies to reset expectations, strengthen communication, and create inclusive, resilient public environments.

Learning objectives:

Identify common collaboration challenges that affect project safety, resilience, and long-term performance.
Apply strategies to align interdisciplinary roles early to support safe, maintainable, and climate-responsive landscapes.
Evaluate how integrating soils, hydrology, planting, and maintenance improves public health, resilience, and accessibility.
Implement a framework for structuring interdisciplinary collaboration that elevates landscape leadership and reduces project risk.

Nick Glase, ASLA, AIA

Principal & Cofounder

Unknown Studio Landscape Architecture & Urban Design, LLC

Nick Glase is a Principal and co-founder of Unknown Studio Landscape Architecture & Urban Design. His work focuses on cultural, civic, and institutional projects that integrate architecture, landscape, and public life. With dual training in architecture and landscape architecture, he leads multidisciplinary collaborations across the U.S., including museums, botanic gardens, campuses, and public landscapes. Nick is committed to advancing landscape architecture’s role in shaping resilient, inclusive public life through design, teaching, and professional advocacy.

Michelle J. Delk, FASLA

Partner, Landscape Architect

Snøhetta

Michelle Delk is a landscape architect and Partner at Snøhetta whose work focuses on the public realm and how designed places are experienced, remembered, and shared. Her approach resists the conventional boundary between building and landscape, exploring landscape as public art and civic infrastructure rooted in accumulated physical, social, cultural, and historical layers over time. Recent projects include the 550 Madison Public Garden, the Joslyn Museum of Art, and the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. She is a Fellow of ASLA, the Laurie Olin Professor of Practice at UPenn, and serves on the board of the NYC Urban Design Forum.

Tenna Florian, FAIA

Partner

Lake Flato

Tenna Florian, FAIA, is a Partner at Lake|Flato Architects and leader of the firm’s Eco-Conservation Studio. Her work focuses on environmentally responsive design and deeply collaborative projects that integrate architecture, landscape, and ecological systems. Tenna has led numerous award-winning cultural and civic projects that advance community engagement, climate responsiveness, and inclusive public space.