Jill Desimini

Jill Desimini is a landscape architect and associate professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She is trained as an architect and landscape architect and has practiced in both fields. Her current research explores fallowness through the investigation of design strategies for property devaluation and abandonment. It looks to non-linear notions of time and alternative governance structures to counter market-driven approaches to land development. She is the author of Cyclical City: Five Stories of Urban Transformation (University of Virginia Press, 2021), From Fallow: 100 Ideas for Abandoned Urban Landscapes (ORO Editions, 2019), and co-author of Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016). Her work has also appeared in Manifest Journal, Bracket [Takes Action], JAE Online, A Public Space, LA Frontiers, New Geographies 10: Fallow, Journal of Urban History, Landscape Journal, Journal of Landscape Architecture, Scenario Journal, The Journal of Chinese Landscape Architecture, Places, as well as in book chapters on fallowness, urban wilds, land banks, and other related topics. She holds a Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Brown University. Prior to joining the GSD, she worked at Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, Wallace, Roberts and Todd, and KieranTimberlake.