Assistant Professor
2021-2023 Meadows Foundation Centennial Fellow in Architecture
Maggie Hansen is a landscape designer and artist who brings multidisciplinary training to the design of public spaces. She earned a BA from the University of Chicago and worked in contemporary art and theater before turning to design. She holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia.
Her design experience includes professional practice and community-based design. As a designer at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, she contributed to design on award-winning projects at a range of scales, including the Brooklyn Naval Cemetery, the Overlook Farm Masterplan, and Olana State Historic Site. As director of Tulane’s Small Center for Collaborative Design, she led community-based design projects in support of a more equitable New Orleans. Under her leadership, the Center developed engagement strategies for youth of all ages, piloted public programming, and fostered relationships across nonprofit, municipal, and grassroots groups. She is currently co-editing a volume that reflects on the Center’s work in service to New Orleans community groups. She co-authored the book, SMALLx20: Twenty Years of Community Engaged Design in New Orleans, which illustrates the Center’s approach to design in support of community needs.
Professor Hansen’s research, teaching, and creative work draw influence from theater, gardening, participatory art, and activist methods to reimagine the boundaries of design as a relational practice. Her book, Transgressive Practices to Transformative Policies: Landscape Change Fast and Slow, presents models of place-based design work that challenges the rules of landscape practice.
She is co-curator of Ditched Schemes, a zine and podcast that explores unrealized projects, creative risk-taking, and notions of success in landscape architecture.
Maggie is a co-lead on the research initiative, Frontline Community Partnerships for Climate Action, which began with support from Planet Texas 2050, and focuses on promoting youth-identified environmental improvements. As a part of this initiative, Maggie leads community-engaged design studios to explore improvements to public space. This work is developed in dialogue with community-based organizations and municipal leaders in the Rio Grande Valley. The project, Voices of Las Milpas, developed through the Monument Lab 2026 Re:Generation cohort, documents the recent history of environmental change and civic engagement in South Pharr, TX. With Miriam Solis, her work on eco-connectivity in the RGV received the SOM Foundation’s 2025 Research Award.
Professor Hansen is the recipient of the 2021-22 School of Architecture Award for Outstanding Teaching (Studio). Her students’ design work has been recognized for design excellence through national and state ASLA awards. Prior to joining the UT School of Architecture, she was a Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University and a Guest Studio Professor at Kent State University.
EDUCATION
- Master of Architecture, University of Virginia
- Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia
- Bachelor of Arts, University of Chicago
PUBLICATIONS
2025
Hansen, M., “Cultivating a Care-full Urbanism: Learning from Land-based Organizing in New Orleans,” Landscape Research. DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2025.2500371
Hansen, M., Jenisch, N., Yoachim, A., Taylor, E., Smallx20: Twenty Years of Community-Engaged Design in New Orleans. Applied Research + Design. October 2025.
2024
Hansen, M., ed. Transgressive Practices to Transformative Policies: Landscape Change, Fast & Slow, The Center for American Architecture and Design. 2024.
Hansen, M. “Positing A Pedagogy of Care in Design Education,” Architecture Media Politics Society (AMPS): Teaching Beyond the Curriculum Proceedings 28.3: ISSN 2398-9467
Hansen, M. and Birkeland, J. “The Runner-Up Club,” Landscape Architecture Magazine, August 2024, pp. 106-115.
Taylor, E., Jenisch, N., Yoachim, A., Cotto, J., Hansen, M. “If: Then, Assessing the Impacts of 20 Years of a University-Based Community Design Center,” Association of Collegiate Schools of ArchitectureProceedings 112
2023
Hansen, M., “Green Thumbs: The Politics and Precarity of Land Care Labors,” The Jugaad Project: What Matters in ‘Work’?, Winter 2023, Vol. 5, No. 2. https://www.thejugaadproject.pub/home/green-thumbs (open-access)
Hansen, M., “Design from the Margins: Five Potentials from Place-Based Land Care,” Architecture Media Politics Society (AMPS): New York – Livable Cities Proceedings 34.1: ISSN 2398-9467, pp. 118-126. (open-access)
2018
Hansen, M., "‘Designing through an Ethic of Care’ European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools Conference Proceedings"
Hansen, M., Taylor, E. “Collaborating for Change in New Orleans: Small Center for Collaborative Design" in Bell, B., Abendorth, L, (Eds.) Public Interest Design Education Guidebook: Curricula, Strategies, and SEED Academic Case Studies
2016
Taylor, E., Hansen, M., Mobley, S. Designers, Citizens, and Citizen-Designers; charting new modes of engagement, collaboration, and project outcomes at the Tulane City Center, ACSA National Meeting
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2022
“Cultivating a Design Practice of Land Care: teaching at the intersection of land and labor” (Panel), Council for Educators in Landscape Architecture (convener/moderator, with Jenny Jones, Jen Toy, Michael Geffel, and Michelle Franco), New Mexico
Hansen, M. “Embodied Care: Landscape Labor and Environmental Publics,” Council for Educators in Landscape Architecture, New Mexico
Hansen, M. “Teaching Design-informed Citizenship: Considering the Designer in Context,” Architecture Media Politics Society: A Focus on Pedagogy
2021
“Remembering for the Future: Using Storytelling in Design to Engage Complicated Histories,” panel at ACSA Annual Meeting (convener/moderator, with Sue Mobley, Marc Miller, Alissa Ujie Diamond)
Hansen, M., “Situated Cultures: Lessons from Bayou Road,” Environmental Design Research Association
Hansen, M., “Teaching the Limits of Design”, European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools conference: Stop and Think, SLU-Uppsala, Sweden
