Paul Kelsch, Ph.D., ASLA

B.Arch, University of Notre Dame

MLA, University of Michigan

Ph.D., Royal Holloway College, Univ. of London

Paul Kelsch is the Robert L. Turner Chair in Urban Design and coordinator of the MS.Arch in Urban Design program at the VT Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center. He holds professional degrees in landscape architecture and architecture, as well as a PhD in cultural geography. His teaching and research focus on the role of nature in the city, with particular attention to water systems, urban forests, and energy systems. More broadly, he examines the interrelationships between ecological understandings of nature and other discourses of nature grounded in landscape history, art, experience, and social theory. His interest is in the ways in which nature is represented and symbolically engaged in the city so that ecological processes are felt to be meaningfully integrated in urban life.

Reflecting his own diverse educational background, Paul Kelsch teaches interdisciplinary design studios integrating architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture into a collective investigation of the urban landscape and architecture of Washington, DC. He also teaches the history and theory of landscape architecture and a course in landscape design and theory at the scale of individual sites. He has won numerous awards for his teaching, scholarship, and outreach.

Paul Kelsch has conducted several in-depth studies of the urban parkways of metropolitan Washington on behalf of the National Park Service. Each study compares a parkway’s historical design with its current conditions and makes recommendations for both historical preservation and sustainable management of these important landscape corridors in the region. These studies have led to a broader understanding of the landscape of the Potomac River. Drawing on his background in cultural geography, Kelsch weaves narratives about the cultivation of Nature and Nation along the banks of the Potomac, showing how the shallow tidal river was transformed through design and planning into a Capital River, one that manifests complex ideas of nature in the capital city as a part of American national identity.

select publications

• “History and Ecology in Redesigned Forest Edges of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.” In Landscape Research Record 10. Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, 2021.
• “Using Sections to Assess Sequential Experience along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway,” in R. Smardon, ed., Seeking 20/20 Vision for Landscape Futures, 2020, digitalcommons.esf.edu/vrconference/6/
• “Viewing the ‘Landscape’ of the George Washington Memorial Parkway,” in P. Gobster & R. Smardon, Landscape and Seascape Management in a Time of Change, 2018. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/57527
• “Accessing a Riverfront: Reimagining the George Washington Memorial Parkway at Rosslyn, Virginia,” Transportation Research Record. 2017.
• “Of Muddy Waters and Presidential Memorials: Erosion & Sedimentation in the Potomac River Watershed,” Landscape Research Record, No. 4, 2016, Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.
• “Cultivating Modernity, History and Nature” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. London and Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis Group, Ltd., 2013.
• “Putting the History in Natural History: Buster Simpson’s Host Analog and Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape,” Visual and Historical Geographies: Essays in Honour of Denis Cosgrove, Historical Geography Research Series, no 42. London: Historical Geography Research Group, Royal Geographic Society, December 2010.
• “Constructions of American Forest: Four Landscapes, Four Readings”, in M. Conan, ed., Environmentalism and Landscape Architecture. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 2000, 165-185.

pkelsch@vt.edu
+1.703.566.6701