Clare Smith

Background

About Clare Smith

I spent my childhood in a Montessori school where the natural world often served as my classroom, textbook, and teacher. The landscape taught me math, science, ecology, and community simply through immersion. Instead of a typical playground with swings and slides, we spent our recess in the forest designing and building our very own neighborhood. Stick forts, transportation paths, civic spaces, storefronts (where the only acceptable currency was pine straw!), and community gardens of moss spanned the forest that we called our playground. Little did I know that during my elementary school recess, I was practicing something called landscape architecture. Today, using the landscape as an educational tool is the heart of my design philosophy. All outdoor spaces have ecosystems, histories, and characteristics that landscape architects can harness to create landscapes that are functional, beautiful, and impactful. I believe that looking holistically at the landscape in this way is crucial to the positive impact achievable through landscape architecture. My playground community taught me about the impact of the landscape, and I strive to create designs that do so for others.