Susannah C. Drake is a landscape architect and architect who specializes in complex projects that require a synthesized, analytical, and research-based approach. All of her designs engage diverse systems to create ecologically and socially progressive projects that are equally well-crafted and beautiful. As one of very few designers of her generation with professional design qualifications in architecture and landscape architecture, Susannah paved the way for more synthetic thinking about urban ecological infrastructure. She is formerly the founding principal of DLANDstudio, which joined Sasaki in May 2022. 

Susannah’s research has been at the forefront of innovation on urban ecological infrastructure. Her research on campus and urban design has received funding through grants from the Graham Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, NYS Environmental Facilities Corporation, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Her work has received numerous national and international design awards and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

Susannah is currently an adjunct professor at The Cooper Union and has led design studios at University of Colorado Boulder, Harvard University, Washington University in St. Louis, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and City College of New York. She served as President and Trustee of the New York ASLA and as a Trustee of the Van Alen Institute. Her essay entitled “WPA 2.0: Beauty, Economics, and Politics in the Creation of Public Infrastructure,” was published in the Lincoln Land Institute book, Nature and Cities, edited by Fritz Steiner.