Susannah Drake

Susannah C. Drake is a principal at Sasaki. Prior to merging her practice with the firm, she founded DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture pllc. Her work has received city, state, and national AIA and ASLA awards. Susannah was awarded the AIA Young Architects Award, Fellowship in the AIA, Fellowship in the ASLA, and was recognized as an Architectural League Emerging Voice. Susannah specializes in complex interdisciplinary projects that require a synthesized, analytical, and research-based approach. Her large-scale planning work engages diverse systems to create ecologically and socially progressive projects that are rigorously researched, strategically planned, and beautifully designed.

Susannah’s creative vision is consistently at the forefront of innovation in urban ecological infrastructure. Her campus landscape design and large-scale urban infrastructure work received grant funding from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Graham Foundation, James Marston Fitch Foundation, New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation, Rockefeller Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts among others. She lectures globally about resilient urban infrastructure, and has taught at the Cooper Union, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Syracuse University, Washington University, CCNY, and the Escola da Cidade in Sao Paolo Brazil. Susannah was the Cejas Scholar at Florida International University, and 2016 Morgenstern Visiting Chair at the Illinois Institute of Technology. From 2019-2021 she was Associate Professor of architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Colorado Boulder Program in Environmental Design.

Her works and writings on climate adaptation and infrastructure are published in “A Blueprint for Coastal Urbanism” (Island Press 2021), “Public Space Reader” (Routledge 2021), “Four Corridors” (Hatje Cantz 2019), “Design with Nature Now” (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2019), “Nature and Cities” (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy & UT Austin 2016), and “Rising Currents” (MoMA 2011). Her book “Gowanus Sponge Park” will be published by Park Books in 2023.

Susannah’s design work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 2020 her Gowanus Canal Sponge Park project won the inaugural Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award for Climate Action. Most recently she unveiled a bold plan titled “History Secured” for how to protect and preserve cultural and ecological assets of the National Mall in Washington DC.

Susannah serves on the board of the Regional Plan Association. She is President of the Board of Trustees of the Clyfford Still Museum. She was appointed by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock to the Downtown Denver Advisory Board. Susannah received a BA from Dartmouth College and MArch and MLA degrees from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She splits her time between offices in Brooklyn, New York, and Denver, Colorado.