Eric Higbee

Lecturer + Affiliate Faculty

Eric Higbee is a licensed landscape architect, community organizer, writer, and researcher residing at the intersection of placemaking and community building. Eric believes communities are often at the leading edge of innovation and progress, and that in an increasingly socially fragmented world, place-based community engagement has incredible potential for cultivating social cohesion.

His writings and research on community engagement, society, and place-based communities are published regularly on his blog, The Answer is Community.

Eric currently practices as a principal landscape architect at Convene, a small collaborative landscape architecture practice based in Seattle. His work includes award-winning and pioneering projects such as the UpGarden (the country’s first rooftop community garden), the Wallybug (Seattle’s first painted intersection mural), and Hawthorne Elementary (the country’s first loose-parts playground at a public elementary school). He has led dozens of participatory design processes with diverse communities throughout Seattle and Washington State

In part through his previous professional experience at several Seattle design firms, including Gustafson Guthrie Nichol and Murase Associates, he has served on multi-disciplinary teams with architects, artists, engineers, developers and public agencies through all phases of the design and construction process.  Eric’s design approach incorporates a keen eye for conceptual design with a deep knowledge of construction detailing and process. He is familiar with a diverse range of sustainable practices and has an intuitive knowledge of plants and their uses.

Eric is also the former Design and Executive Directors of Pomegranate Center, a non-profit organization nationally renowned for its community engagement methodology and creative placemaking practice.

Eric holds an MLA from the University of Washington, and has a BFA in Illustration & Graphic Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology. When he is not conspiring to implement his latest community building effort, you can find Eric tending his garden, backpacking in the mountains, or spending time with his family.