Xiaoxuan Lu is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture, where she teaches landscape history and theory, and design studios. She has practiced in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture at Turenscape in Beijing, West 8 in Rotterdam, Bjarke Ingels Group in Copenhagen, and SWA in Los Angeles. For Turenscape, she recently worked as the project manager for Zaryadye Park International Competition, which envisions Zaryadye Park as an urban ecosystem that provides multiple eco-services to the city and people.

Her research focuses on the cultural landscape and geography of conflict, particularly in transboundary regions. Applying analytical cartography, photography and video in her research, Xiaoxuan aims to reveal the hidden layers of landscape where multiple tensions converge. In her MLA thesis, “Mining as Demining,” she focused on the remediation of post-war landscape in Laos PDR, which won her an Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2012. Her doctoral dissertation, “Reconceptulizing China’s Northwestern Frontiers: Arid Land, The Corps, and Public Water Works,” examines the relationship between water and power in China’s militia-stationed northwestern frontier, and how discourses of ecology have influenced and problematized notions of “State” and “wasteland.”

Her writing and research has been published in LEAP (2016.3), Calvert Journal (2015.11), ON SITE Review (2015.9), Journal of Natural Resources(2014.11), Human Geography (2014.8), The Traveler (2014.9), and Acta Ecologica Sinica (2014.3). Her research and design work has been exhibited internationally in “Crossing Kazakhstan: The Monumentality of Linear Landscape” at Harvard University in Cambridge (2016.4-10), “Dialogues on Urbanization Exhibition” at IIT in Chicago (2015.3-5), and 22nd International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire, France (2013.5-11).

Xiaoxuan has served as an editor and columnist for Landscape Architecture Frontiers since 2012, which won an Honor Award in the Communications category of 2015 ASLA professional awards. Her “Experiments and Processes” column showcases a range of speculative design project. It functions as a platform for exploring narratives behind experimental methodologies, representations and results, while projecting a future for landscape architecture that is positioned between research, storytelling, and design.

Xiaoxuan received her Bachelor of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture, and Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. She was a PhD Fellow at Harvard University during the academic years of 2014-2016, and she expects to receive her PhD in Human Geography from Peking University by the end of 2016.