Faculty Profile
Matthew Dallos
Assistant Professor
Department of Landscape Architecture
I’m fascinated by the diverse entanglements between plant life, culture, and design. I explore these entanglements in my teaching, research, and practice through historical, theoretical, and land-based methods. Looking at planting plans from the 1800s; standing in an Acer rubrum thicket: I find both to be helpful in combining different types of knowledges, scales, and experiences.
If I have a favorite tree species, it’s Acer negundo, Box Elder. Junk tree: that’s what this species is sometimes called. It tends to break and flop over, and it drops so many seeds that it forms thickets. Individuals often don’t live very long. But when a Box Elder flops over, it resprouts vigorously; when it forms a thicket, it anchors degraded stream banks; when it snaps and then dies, it does so slowly, offering at least a decade of habitat for woodpeckers. To me, the species speaks to the type of situated, multi-species plant thinking we need to incorporate into landscapes. A significant part of my recent work has pursued how biodiverse and structurally complex assemblages of plant life can be resilient, adaptive, and culturally meaningful.
I venture frequently into allied fields such as ecological restoration and ecological forestry. These fields advance dialogues about stewardship, process, disturbance, complexity, ecological rigor, and temporality that challenge how I think about design.
My writing has been published in Places, Chinese Landscape Architecture, and Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. I also wrote a book about the Adirondacks—In the Adirondacks: Dispatches from the Largest Park in the Lower 48, published by Fordham University Press.
Prior to ESF, I completed a PhD in Environmental History at Cornell University. My dissertation, “Americans in the Wild Garden: A History of Close-to-Home Wildness,” dug into the ways Americans have invited (or not invited) wildness into close-to-home places over the past century and a half. Before that, I did graduate work in Landscape Architecture at Penn State University, studying the spatial structure of infrastructural systems.
Beyond my teaching, I lead Thicket Workshop, a plant-focused design firm that works on public and private projects. Recent work has ranged from stress-adapted urban plantings to designing forest recruitment strategies for degraded lands.
Current teaching
LSA 433/633 Planting Design + Practice
LSA 799 Capstone / Thesis Development
LSA 470/670 Thematic Design Studio