Landscape Architecture :: Ben Spencer

As a Peace Corps from 2004 to 2006 in Venilale, East Timor, Spencer worked with community leaders to develop a master plan and design projects that integrated economic growth, environmental regeneration and social justice. Though still early in his career, Spencer has since carved a niche for himself by continuing to study the relationship between design, ecology and community health.

As vice president of the Seattle chapter of Architects Without Borders, Spencer remains committed to serving needy populations. And he has successfully blurred the lines between his professional work and his social interests, with a resume that includes two firms on the forefront of sustainable design: William McDonough + Partners and HyBrid Seattle. While at HyBrid, Spencer worked with partners Robert Humble and Joel Egan and ORA’s Owen Richards, Tom Mullica and Kate Kudney to design the winning entry in the Rice Design Alliance's $99k House Competition.

Their winning home, which will be built in Houston's downtown Fifth Ward, is not only affordable, it has the potential to provide supplementary income to its owners over its lifetime. Movable interior walls and a compact two-story parti allow residents to adapt the 1300-square-foot home to the changing needs of a family over time. They can reconfigure interior spaces to create children's bedrooms, a home office, or a rental unit for tenants on the second floor.

Spencer believes designers are uniquely positioned to create public spaces, buildings and systems that transform the way we interact with our surroundings. He suggests, for example, that "rather than continuing to rely on centralized infrastructure – underground conduits that externalize the effects of consumption – we should aggressively pursue ecologically intelligent distributed infrastructure." He believes community scaled technologies, such as bioswales and greywater gardens, can bring tangible presence to the social, industrial and ecological dynamics that support urban life.

Spencer joined the faculty of the University of Washington School of Architecture and Urban Planning last fall as an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture. This winter, his students will re-imagine an existing site of industrial or utility infrastructure and its role in Seattle.

"I believe landscape architecture is poised to become a deeply influential profession," he says. "Its system-based approach to design, appreciation for temporal evolution and synthetic character are well suited to address the ecological and social challenges we will face in the next 50 years”