Designing for Change

Lecture description:

Gina Ford and Rhiannon Sinclair of Agency LP discussed how design should be an agent of change in our society addressing social equity, cultural vitality, and environmental resilience in our current pandemic. They also presented their feminist-driven design practice and a number of interesting and exciting projects. Sinclair is an alumnus of the Landscape Architecture Program at Jefferson.  

Bios:

Gina Ford, FASLA
Principal and Co-Founder

Gina Ford is a landscape architect, co-founder and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning. Underpinning her two decades of practice are a commitment to the design and planning of public places and the perpetuation of the value of landscape architecture via thought leadership, teaching, writing and lecturing.  Her work has received awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects, among others. She is on the board of directors for the Cultural Landscape Foundation and was the recipient of the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship and Wellesley College’s Shaw Fellowship.

Rhiannon Sinclair
Senior Urban Planner, BArch 2011

An urban planner with a background in architecture, Rhiannon Sinclair's work focuses on complex urban systems across multiple scales. She uses data-driven strategies to better understand and enhance the relationship between people, buildings, systems and the public realm. Rhiannon has considerable experience communicating information to broad audiences to promote strong community exchange and empowerment within a planning process. In her work, she finds that the role of this type of exchange and master plan facilitation contributes to plans that are visionary, comprehensive, and implementable.

Agency Landscape + Planning

Agency is the capacity of human beings to act, to make choices. Planning can empower people. Design is an act of optimism. Empowerment and optimism are much needed, today more than ever. At Agency Landscape + Planning, we believe in the power of people to initiate and make purposeful, positive change

Agency is a mission-driven practice dedicated to addressing social equity, cultural vitality and environmental resilience through design excellence, strategic planning and community empowerment. We believe that - in order to address the most challenging issues of our contemporary society - diversity and inclusion are foundational to how we see, understand and, ultimately, shape our collective experience, particularly in the public spaces, parks and streets of our urban communities. We seek landscape and planning opportunities that allow us to partner meaningfully with constituents, that welcome many voices and hands in the process, and that produce outcomes that are deeply connected to the richness and uniqueness of place.

Agency is a women-run business enterprise led by partners Gina Ford and Brie Hensold. Our leadership - combined with a collective team of passionate and talented landscape architects, planners and urban designers - enables the full spectrum of design services - from strategic planning to complex landscape implementation.