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Margot Lystra Joins Garden and Landscape Studies as a Short-Term Predoctoral Resident

Posted On February 27, 2017 | 09:27 am | by lainw | Permalink

Dumbarton Oaks is pleased to welcome Margot Lystra, who joins Garden and Landscape Studies as a short-term predoctoral resident from February 27 to March 15.

Margot is a PhD candidate in the history of architecture and urban development at Cornell University, and holds a master of landscape architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a bachelor of arts in biology from Swarthmore College. Her dissertation, “Envisioning Environments: Designs for Urban US Freeways, 1956–1968,” articulates designers’ efforts to reveal the environmental effects of freeway infrastructures, drawing on Science and Technology Studies frameworks to analyze the political and disciplinary ramifications of design methods and techniques. 

Margot has taught landscape architectural design, representation, and theory at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and the University of Detroit Mercy. Her work has been published in Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed LandscapesJournal of Design History, and The Next American City. As a designer, she has worked for CMG Landscape Architecture, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, and various San Francisco-based landscape architecture firms.