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Professor Matthew Potteiger
Matthew Potteiger Honored by American Society of Landscape Architecture
SYRACUSE, NY — Oct. 06, 2025 — Professor Matthew Potteiger at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) received the American Society of Landscape Architecture’s (ASLA) highest honor, the Community Service Honor Award.
The award recognizes Potteiger’s long-term commitment to engaging diverse communities locally and internationally. Using the power of narratives and food systems, his community-based projects and co-creation of organizations such as Syracuse Grows and Salt City Harvest Farm work toward systemic and structural change.
"I have found that starting with ordinary practices such as telling stories or eating, which seem so intangible, and then tracking how they become embedded in and change with landscapes can lead to new design pathways that go beyond individual sites to shape open-ended systems that have lives of their own,” said Potteiger of his work.
As professor of landscape architecture at ESF, Potteiger has sought to connect design with the cultural practices that make vital and meaningful places. His book Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories provides a framework of design practices that engage with place-based narratives and has influenced the work of designers, educators, public artists, planners, students, and community activists worldwide. The book, co-authored with Jamie Purinton, received the ASLA Merit Award.
Potteiger’s research, teaching and community engagement focus on the fundamental link between food and landscape leveraging design to create more sustainable and socially just food systems.
He has led community-based projects for urban agriculture, public markets, New American refugee farming, edible multi-functional green infrastructure at the landscape scale, and the first regional food system plan for Central New York. This multi-disciplinary work is grounded in long-term relationships and sustained by his commitments to co-create community organizations for building their own agency and capacity for growth.
“Congratulations to Professor Potteiger on receiving the ASLA Community Service Honor Award. Matt’s work exemplifies how design rooted in storytelling and food systems can foster meaningful, lasting change across communities,” said ESF President Joanie Mahoney. “We are proud of the impact Matt continues to make both locally and globally through his teaching, research, and community partnerships.”
About SUNY ESF
The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) is dedicated to the study of the environment, developing renewable technologies, and building a sustainable and resilient future through design, policy, and management of the environment and natural resources. Members of the College community share a passion for protecting the health of the planet and a deep commitment to the rigorous application of science to improve the way humans interact with the world. The College offers academic programs ranging from the associate of applied science to the Doctor of Philosophy. ESF students live, study and do research on the main campus in Syracuse, N.Y., and on 25,000 acres of field stations in a variety of ecosystems across the state.