Knowlton School

10/08/2026

Landscape of Hope: A Plan for Below and Beyond

Located in the Long Island Sound between Long Island and The Bronx, 131-acre Hart Island holds the remains of more than one million New York residents. Occupied by the marginalized and vulnerable of society, the island’s long trenches are the final resting place for those who cannot afford a private burial and for unclaimed and unidentified New Yorkers.

First used as a Civil War camp and military organizing ground, the mass burials began in 1872. The mass burial process established in the 19th century continues to today with only slight modifications. The deceased are placed in caskets, and the caskets are stacked four deep in two rows in 60-foot-long trenches. Each trench holds 200 caskets. Trenches are kept open for weeks at a time.

Over the last several years, three Knowlton School landscape faculty have developed a proposal for a new burial system for Hart Island that offers a humane treatment of those buried there and for those visiting the deceased.

In collaboration with The Hart Island Project—a nonprofit organization in New York founded by Melinda Hunt—Associate Professor Jacob Boswell and lecturers Brendan Ayer and Jack Gruber have developed Landscape of Hope, a proof-of-concept that seeks to remove the stigma surrounding the island’s current burial system.

Read more
https://bit.ly/47J42Fc

10/07/2026

👏👏👏 Congratulations to Bachelor of Science in City and Regional Planning student D’Laveance Bert-Sims, who was selected to receive a 2026–28 Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholarship for Public Service.

Scholarship recipients receive up to $25,000 per year financial aid for their junior and senior years of college and a $10,000 stipend and free housing in Airbnb listings to pursue a summer work-travel experience between their junior and senior year of college. In addition, scholarship recipients are invited to an annual summit and an ongoing speaker series. After graduation, they join the Obama Foundation’s global community, providing them with Foundation resources and programming.
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The Voyager Scholarship Program is a two-year leadership development and scholarship program. Through a transformational combination of barrier-reducing financial aid, an immersive work-travel experience, and a robust network of leaders and mentors, the Voyager Scholarship is designed to inspire, empower, and connect the next generation of leaders and equip them with the tools and resources they need to launch their careers in public service.

D'Laveance Bert-Sims’ commitment to building reliable public transportation systems is rooted in his experiences as a Transit Columbus board member and a transportation planning intern at the City of Columbus, Ohio. As an all-weather cyclist and public transit user, he has witnessed the impacts of reliable public services and the shortcomings of a resource-constrained bike and transit network.

Read more
https://knowlton.osu.edu/news/2026/09/dlaveance-bert-sims-selected-2026-28-obama-chesky-voyager?utm_campaign=eng_marketing-activity_fy27&utm_content=1791407940&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

10/06/2026

TODAY AND TOMORROW
Amazon Prime Days are the perfect time to donate to the Knowlton Food Pantry!

Food insecurity is a reality for many Ohio State and Knowlton students. You can help ensure that all Knowlton students have enough to eat by contributing to the Knowlton Food Pantry. Give now and help members of the community in need.

Wishlist: https://amzn.to/4djxK7a

Located between Student Services and the Banvard Gallery on the first floor of Knowlton Hall and open to students 24 hours a day, the Knowlton Food Pantry is here to assist the Knowlton community in need.

Those who prefer to shop independently can donate supplies by dropping them off at the Knowlton Food Pantry on the first floor of Knowlton Hall.

10/06/2026

Closes Friday!
The Thunder is Loud and Rolling
in the Banvard Gallery until OCT 9

The Thunder is Loud and Rolling brings together practitioners confronting the fraught conditions shaping southern Lebanon today, where earth and sky emerge as sites of struggle and fields of possibility. While older negotiations with the environment persist, agricultural life must now calibrate between a high-tech occupation overhead and an enduring fidelity to land and harvest below, giving rise to spatial and cultural practices that unsettle any easy division between war and peace.

In their drawings, EcoRove and Mohamad Nahleh render this entanglement legible, tracing how militarization is at once eclipsed and reimagined through an insistence on a shared, postcolonial future. Through sound installation and ceramic bells, Ghida Anouti and Jess Myers tune the space to the enduring temporalities of land and the strained listening that occurs in the fragile timing of safety and seasonal order.

The Banvard Gallery is located on the first floor of Knowlton Hall and is open Monday–Friday from 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Read more
https://bit.ly/4j41Pv2

10/05/2026

THIS WEDNESDAY!

The Baumer Lecture Series continues this Wednesday, October 7, at 5:30 p.m. in the Gui Auditorium with Greg Castillo.

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Contemporary society faces a critical decision point in the “deteriorating state of our social imagination,” according to collective intelligence theorist Geoff Mulligan. As billionaires consolidate their power over media, they propagate imagined corporate techno-futures and dismiss grassroots visions of alternative tomorrows. “Outlaw Worldbuilders” dispenses with nostalgic readings of Bay Area counterculture to reassess its production of alternative social realities through physical construction and adaptive reuse of built infrastructures.

Based on essays in Design Radicals: Building Counterculture in the Bay Area, the talk examines the work of three communities of Californian “outlaw builders”—Native Americans, anti-patriarchal feminists, and Berkeley architecture students—as potential templates for our own challenge to reimagine the world anew.

Greg Castillo is a professor in the Department of Architecture at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design and an Honorary Associate Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning.

Read more
https://bit.ly/4xRp3bn

10/02/2026

Knowlton School Student Organization Highlight:
City and Regional Planning Student Association

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The City and Regional Planning Student Association (CRPSA) is the Knowlton School’s student organization for students interested in urban planning, design, and policy. Their mission is to build community, expand professional networks, and connect members directly with the planning industry.

CRPSA offers access to alumni connections, career development, and student membership in the American Planning Association.

All majors are welcome, and there is no fee to join. Follow .crpsa on Instagram for updates and upcoming events.

This year’s CRPSA Executive Board includes: Stephanie McCauley, President; Aubri Hoop, Vice President; Hannah Sabagh, Assistant Vice President; Hyunseo Kim, Treasurer; Krish Harsha, Assistant Treasurer; Sebastian Reese, Secretary; Courtney Adam, Events Chair; Isabel George, Events Chair; Kausila Subedi, Events Chair; Emily Halperin, Communications; Evie Chermonte, Communications; and Taylor Mason, Communications.

10/01/2026

Through signs, images, newspaper articles, yearbook spreads, sculptures, and architecture, the community in and around Ohio State has long claimed that sites on campus bear the physical traces of the Underground Railroad.

Associate Professor of Architecture Karen Lewis, who has worked on mapping and other visualizations of the wider Underground Railroad, found those claims interesting—and surprising. Now, through BETHA-funded research, Lewis has filled in the historical record and brought her disciplinary expertise to some of those claims.

We spoke with Lewis about architectural forensics, Ohio’s “Underground Railroad imaginary,” and the complex interaction of the historical record and community self-image.

Read the full interview
https://knowlton.osu.edu/news/2026/09/forensic-approach-architecture-visualizing-underground-railroad?utm_campaign=eng_marketing-activity_fy27&utm_content=1790883961&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

09/28/2026

THIS WEDNESDAY!

The Baumer Lecture Series continues this Wednesday, September 30, at 5:30 p.m. in the Gui Auditorium with Gonzalo Cruz of AECOM.

Gonzalo Cruz is a design principal for New York and leads AECOM’s Landscape Architecture and Urban Design (LAUD) practice.

Cruz’s work brings together landscape architecture, urban design, and community engagement to create resilient and inclusive public spaces.

Cruz has led the design of award-winning projects including Liberty Park at the World Trade Center, the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience Master Plan, Sendero Verde in East Harlem, and the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project, including the transformation of Wagner Park.

Read more at
https://knowlton.osu.edu/events/2026/09/baumer-lecture-series-gonzalo-cruz?utm_campaign=eng_marketing-activity_fy27&utm_content=1790621581&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

09/25/2026

Book Talk
Reconstructors: Land, Work, and Engineering After the Civil War
OCT 8 / 4 PM
Knowlton Hall, Big Stairs

Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture John Dean Davis has published Reconstructors: Land, Work, and Engineering After the Civil War. The book explores the transformation of the landscape by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during Reconstruction.

Davis will discuss the book on OCT 8 at 4 PM on Knowlton Hall's Big Stairs. This event is co-sponsored by the Environmental History Initiative and the Knowlton School.

https://knowlton.osu.edu/events/2026/10/reconstructors-land-work-and-engineering-after-civil-war-book-talk?utm_campaign=eng_marketing-activity_fy27&utm_content=1790366823&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

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While the Reconstruction Era in America saw a paradigmatic realignment of the country’s core institutions and values, there was a physical quality to Reconstruction as well: the country was not only rebuilding the South after the Civil War, but flat-out building as it expanded westward.

In Reconstructors, John Dean Davis details how the Army Corps of Engineers and its subcontractors designed and redesigned the infrastructural landscape to support the republic’s rebirth. The Corps’ projects not only transformed the landscape; they created markets, fostered a distinctive expansionist culture, and—for a time—enacted a less discriminatory economic and social agenda across the South and West. Davis aims to bring federal power, environmentalism, and capitalism into a frame that reveals the landscape’s power to further ideology.

Read more
https://knowlton.osu.edu/news/2026/08/john-davis-publishes-reconstructors-land-work-and-engineering-after-civil-war?utm_campaign=eng_marketing-activity_fy27&utm_content=1790366823&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Davis will also deliver talks at

— The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, September 25
— Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, October 2
— Dumbarton Oaks, October 22

09/24/2026