Mariel Collard

Mariel Collard Arias is a Mexican designer and landscape educator. She has been part of the Master of Landscape Architecture program at Pratt Institute since its inaugural year in 2022.

Mariel’s work explores landscape traditions that challenge the spatial legacies of coloniality. Her current research centers on forms of Earth-based wayfinding—the embodied, cognitive, and cultural process of orienting ourselves in the land. She investigates ancestral practices, tools, materials, and technologies that refine ecological awareness, build landscape competence, and cultivate unmediated relationships with the living world.

Mariel holds a Master in Landscape Architecture and a Master in Design Studies with a concentration in Risk & Resilience from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She earned her Professional Degree in Architecture from Universidad Iberoamericana and is a registered architect in Mexico. Mariel brings extensive professional experience, having collaborated with renowned firms and led her own independent practice. Prior to joining Pratt, she also served as a lecturer at McGill University.