When a Library Is the Landscape: Designing the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Recorded On: 09/16/2026

Theodore Roosevelt was transformed by the Badlands; this library transforms visitors. This session reveals how architects, landscape designers, and storytellers turned site, ecology, and history into an immersive, living landscape. Attendees will learn how bold collaboration, ecological design, and narrative-driven planning can create civic spaces that inspire, educate, and endure.

Learning objectives:

Apply strategies for collaborative leadership that translate articulated design vision into built reality by aligning clients, architects, landscape architects, and construction teams to guide projects from concept to completion.
Translate site analysis into design decisions by recognizing how subtle ecological, historical, and cultural qualities can drive innovative design solutions.
Develop design strategies rooted in iterative, phased exploration while thinking at a systems level, moving beyond property lines and zones to create cohesive, contextually responsive landscapes that connect broader experiences.
Incorporate land management and ecological stewardship as integral components of site planning, restoration, and long-term landscape performance.

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.

Jennifer Jackson, AIA

Principal, Community Practice Studio Leader

JLG Architects

Jennifer Burke Jackson leads the Community Practice Studio at JLG Architects, focusing on projects that elevate and inspire communities -- often in the vein of healing and empowering people. She implements this focus in process and in solution, collaborating deeply with owners and experts to accomplish bold visions. She has served on the JLG Architects Board of Directors since 2019, as well as other community boards and organizations focused on leadership, community and providing safe, healing and inspiring environments.