Leena Cho appointed Chair of Landscape Architecture Department

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Leena Cho, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Founding Director of the Arctic Design Group, has been appointed as Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the UVA School of Architecture, where she has served on the faculty for over a decade.  Cho is also Founding Partner of the design practice, Kutonotuk, established in 2009.  Her practice, scholarship, and teaching center on emerging forms of landscape and design approaches framed by climate-driven interdisciplinary research.  Cho is an internationally recognized designer and researcher whose work resides at the intersection between science and the humanities with a geographic focus on the Arctic.   

“I am thrilled to appoint Leena as the Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department.  She has dedicated her career to innovative scholarship, creative practice, and teaching that address the complex environmental challenges we face across the interconnected built and natural worlds,” said Dean Malo A. Hutson. “Her longstanding research in the Arctic, a region at the frontline of climate extremes, is deeply situated and a result of carefully constructing mutually respectful partnerships with Alaskan communities over many years.  Leena’s leadership skills, that draw from her collaborative approach and strengths in relationship-building, are proven and I am confident that she will serve as Chair with integrity, vision, and collegiality.”   

Cho joined the faculty at the UVA School of Architecture as a Lecturer in 2012, prior to which she was a landscape architect at Maxwan Architects & Urbanists in Rotterdam, where she led a wide range of landscape and urban design projects in Europe.  She taught landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2014), and was a visiting scholar at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, UK (2017).  She became as an Assistant Professor in 2016, later being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2023.  Cho received her BA in Women's Studies from Wellesley College and MLA with distinction from Harvard University. 

During her time at UVA, Cho established the Arctic Design Group (ADG) with Associate Professor Matthew Jull, PhD, and is a founding member of the UVA Arctic Research Center.  The ADG’s research—which addresses critical challenges in the Arctic region by working with partners across disciplines, sectors, institutions and community organizations—been funded by numerous federal and international agencies as well as cultural entities including the US National Science Foundation, US Embassy in Iceland, World Bank, and the Anchorage Museum in addition to the grant awards received at UVA including the Environmental Institute, Jefferson Trust, and the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation.  

In recognition of her significant interdisciplinary design research, Cho received Research Achievement Awards in 2023 and 2024 selected by the UVA Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Faculty Design Award for “Contested Circumpolar: Domestic Territories” by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (2024).  In 2019, the work of Arctic Design Group was chosen as one of one hundred “protagonists of the design world” across ten creative fields worldwide by ICON Design based in Italy. 

Concurrently, her design work is published and has been exhibited in Europe, Asia and North America and has received high-level recognitions such as in Europan, Jardins de Metis, MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, Helsinki Guggenheim Museum and Helsinki Central Library competitions.  Amongst numerous authored chapters and articles, Cho is co-editor of Design and the Built Environment of the Arctic (Routledge, 2023) and co-author of Mediating Environments (Applied Research and Design, 2019).  Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Architectural Biennale, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Anchorage Museum, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Modern Museum of Art.   

In addition to her courses on landscape technology and extreme environments, Associate Professor Cho teaches both foundation and advanced research studios that foreground material and socioecological linkages, site observations, and design experiments.  Since 2015 and through funded traveling design studios, she has brought landscape architecture and architecture students to various parts of the Arctic, offering them an immersive opportunity to learn from a dynamic and rapidly changing environment and multiyear fieldwork rooted in community action.  Her students have won numerous awards over the years including from the American Society of Landscape Architects and World Landscape Architecture.  Cho received an Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture in 2024.   

Cho served as a Graduate Program Director in the Department of Landscape Architecture from 2021 through 2024.  In this role, she provided critical oversight and guidance of the Master of Landscape Architecture curriculum and co-led the program’s recent successful accreditation.  Through her wide-ranging leadership roles, both at school and university levels, she has demonstrated extensive capacity for measured deliberation, careful listening, creative problem-solving, and forward-looking vision.  Highly respected by her faculty and staff colleagues, she also steadfastly supports the student cohort and is a beloved teacher and mentor to landscape architecture students.   

Cho’s appointment as Chair begins July 2025, following Commonwealth Professor of Landscape Architecture Bradley Cantrell’s tenure from 2017-2025.  Cantrell is on sabbatical for the 25-26 academic year after which he will return to the faculty.  “It has been my privilege as Department Chair to work alongside Leena Cho in many capacities—during her tenure as Graduate Program Director, as she built an internationally recognized body of research, and as a dedicated design studio instructor for our students,” said Cantrell. “Leena’s unwavering pursuit of excellence is evident in everything she does; she consistently goes above and beyond for the Department, our students, and the profession at large — and I cannot imagine anyone more qualified or better suited to lead us forward.”   

“I am grateful to the Landscape Architecture faculty for their thoughtful insights and feedback in making this appointment,” said Dean Hutson.  “I especially express my gratitude to Brad for his outstanding leadership over the past eight years and his visionary dedication to the Landscape Architecture Department.  Finally, I thank Leena for stepping into this role and I look forward to supporting her as she works collectively with the department’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni towards continued growth and sustained excellence.”