Kathleen Kambic
Education
- MLA, University of Virginia
- MArch, University of Virginia
Research
- Water
- Infrastructure
- Political Ecology
- Urbanism
- Landscape Theory
Kathleen Kambic is an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of New Mexico. She has worked for multiple nationally known design firms, including NBWLA and EDAW. Her research interests include water infrastructure, marginalized urban space, feminist political ecology, and landscape design theory. Her current research explores feminist critique of landscape architecture as well as water governance and the political ecology of arid landscapes. Recently, Kathleen has taught graduate seminars and studios on decentralized water infrastructure, design competitions, and typologies. She has also won multiple international design competitions on interdisciplinary faculty teams. Kathleen’s research on water infrastructure has expanded to a study of the Rio Grande and its many subbasins, which was begun with the “Water Scarcity Elephant Butte Reservoir” report for the American Roundtable of the Architectural League of New York. She has a new book co-authored with Katya Crawford entitled, The Design Competition in Landscape Architecture: Pedagogy and Practice.
LA 501/401 Design Studio 1
LA 502/402 Studio 2: Urban Typologies
LA 504 Studio 4: Water Studio
LA 505 Competition Studio F 2016
LA 511 Water and the Environment: The Material Commons
LA 511 French Landscape and Urban Design
LA 512 Introduction to Urban Innovation
LA 556/335 Site and Environment
LA 563/463 Theory of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design
LA 596 Research Methods in Landscape Architecture
LA 597 Masters Project Studio
Architecture and Design Summer Academy (ADSA)
The Design Competition in Landscape Architecture: A Guide for Schools and Firms. Coauthored with Katya Crawford. Part of the New Century Gardens and Landscapes of the American Southwest Series, edited by Baker Morrow. University of New Mexico Press. Fall 2025.
Bordear: Cultural Landscapes and Re-envisioning Space on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro at the US/Mexico Border. Edited with Francisco Uviña. Hemlock Printers, 2023.
“Case Study 1: The Enduring and the Ephemeral (Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects)” in Foresight and Design: Composing Future Places, edited by Mark C. Childs. New York: Routledge, 2023.
“Water Scarcity: Elephant Butte Reservoir” in Lower Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico, report for The American Roundtable, The Architectural League of New York. Ane Gonzalez Lara, ed. 2020.
“Limitless Capacity: Western Water and Landscape” in The Unexamined: Critical Inquiries on Architecture and Place, edited by Susannah Dickinson, Jonathan Bean and Aletheia Ida. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020, 119-142.
Review of Designs for the Pluriverse by Arturo Escobar. In JoLA - Journal of Landscape Architecture, 2019, 14:1, 98-99.
Review of Heading Out: A History of American Camping by Terence Young. In The Journal of Tourism History, 2018; 10(3): 298-300.
“ARTiculation” and “Parc Heure” competition boards in TRACE, Nora Wendl, ed. 2018.
“Urban Water Visibility in Los Angeles: Legibility and Access for All.” in A Political Ecology of Women, Water, and Global Environmental Change. Buechler, Stephanie J, and Anne-Marie Hanson, eds. New York: Routledge, 3/2015; 58-76.
Review of Sweet & Salt: Water and the Dutch by Tracy Metz and Maartje van den Heuvel (eds.). In JoLA - Journal of Landscape Architecture 11/2013; 8(2):86-87.
“massive change, required - nine axioms for the future of landscape (architecture)” in KERB – Journal of Landscape Architecture, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, "Is Landscape Architecture Dead?" 2009; 17: 105-110.
“The Infrastructural Era - Garden in the Machine” in R O O T: Resourceful Obstacles 2010: 2; 4-8.
Member, Sustainable Water Resources Grand Challenge Leadership Group/ARID Institute. 2020-24
Founder and Head Juror, JB Jackson On The Brinck Book Award and Lecture Series 2020-23
Member, Arid LID Coalition
UNM SAAP Coordinator for EPA Campus Rainworks Challenge
Landscape architecture professor studies contemporary issues of Rio Grande. Promotional video for ADVANCE at UNM: advance.unm.edu. 2025.
American Roundtable: Diverse Peoples, Arid Landscapes, and the Built Environment, Lower Rio
Grande, New Mexico (Editor Ane González Lara and contributors Saray Argumedo, Lucia Carmona, Tina Cordova, Theodore Jojola, Kathleen Kambic, and Patricia Riggs present the report, Diverse Peoples, Arid Landscapes, and the Built Environment and discuss key themes and findings) On Zoom for the Architectural League of New York. January 29, 2021.
Affiliate to: the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, the Water Resources Program, and the Women, Gender and Sexauality Studies Program
UNM Women in STEM grant recipient 2023: Water Scarcity: Variability along the Rio Grande
UNM WeR1 SuRF grant recipient 2022: The Design Competition in Landscape Architecture: A Guide for Schools and Firms
National Park Service grant recipient 2021: “Design Concepts and Visualization of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Oñate Crossing in El Paso and Associated Sites in Cd. Juarez”: Co-Investigators- Francisco Uviña and Kathleen Kambic, in collaboration with the University of Arizona
1st Place - "What's Up Paris" International Design Competition 2016
3rd Place - "Hornachuelos Reactivation" International Design Competition 2016
