Melody Stein

Melody Stein is a landscape architect, writer, and artist whose work focuses on developing deeper understandings of how people engage with land, and how the materials of landscape can be used to reveal and convey complex histories and narratives about place. After working at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates on a variety of large-scale, public park projects, she founded studio VISIT, a creative practice for land-based research, strategy, and design. Melody’s design practice is research-driven, community-involved, and dedicated to investigating the function and futures of culturally and historically important landscapes across scales. Critical to this is a belief in the connectivity of all land and an understanding that the impacts of cultivation, extraction, management, and preservation do not end at property lines.

Melody is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Pratt Institute. She views teaching and academic work as a laboratory for exploring and critiquing current modes of landscape architectural practice and their social, political, and environmental impacts and implications. Her courses are focused on developing the technical and critical skills that empower students to enter the industry as leaders and change-makers.

Originally from rural Northern California, Melody’s love of landscape emerged within the transect from the Pacific Ocean to the redwood forests and agricultural landscapes of her hometown.

Melody holds a Masters in Landscape Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2019), and a Bachelors in Fine Arts from Cornell University (2016). She is a licensed Landscape Architect in the State of Connecticut.

MLA, Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design