About the PiaT Founder

Kim Douglas received a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, Kim was fortunate to have studied under, and was influenced by, the distinguished educator and early pioneer of ecological planning, Ian McHarg. Kim won many awards while she was a student most notably the George Madden Boughton Prize in Design Excellence in Landscape Architecture. Upon graduation she joined Olin Partnership, an international design firm, where she worked as the lead designer on several award-winning projects including the LEED certified Winter Garden and Plaza at the Comcast Center in Philadelphia.

Kim joined the landscape architecture program at Thomas Jefferson University in 2009. Currently, she is the director of the program. She is also the director of the Lab for Urban and Social Innovation which believes all communities have the right to an ecologically, socially, economically healthy community. The Lab serves as the community outreach arm of the College of Architecture and the Built Environment and works with under-resourced communities in need of design services. In 2016 she was awarded the Anton Germinshuizen Stantec Term Chair in landscape architecture which allows her to continue her research on the effects of contact with nature on communities. Her work includes the acclaimed Park in a Truck project that provides a pre-designed, open-source system that makes it easier for communities to design, build and maintain beautiful, green, low-cost public spaces for healthy, sustainable living. Kim is also currently working on a Pollinator Network in southwest Philadelphia which will increase habitat and green space.

Kim is a licensed landscape architect and founding principal of STUDIO GAEA, an award-winning landscape architectural firm. Her many awards include Cynwyd Heritage Trail in Bala Cynwyd, PA, a rehabilitated brownfield rail corridor and Linwood Avenue Park Plan in Ardmore, PA an innovative sustainable design for a neighborhood park. Her firm specializes in projects that combine a strong design aesthetic with sustainable design solutions and are community driven. It is her belief that each project must be considered for its natural systems as well as its social, historic and economic frameworks. This provides a strong base from which to work and provides the context and clarity needed to conceive memorable places.

Professor Douglas shares her experience in the field of landscape architecture by her involvement in many teaching and volunteer organizations. She regularly visits high schools to talk about the importance of the profession of landscape architecture, works with the Community Design Collaborative and is an Associate with the Environmental Leadership Program which promotes and encourages new leaders in the environmental field. She was recently awarded the ASLA’s Community Service Award that recognizes pro bono service to the community.