Dr. Phillip Fernberg presenting at Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF).

 

Phillip Fernberg is a researcher, educator, and technology strategist. He earned a Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) degree from the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture (LSU RRSLA) in 2019, and has gone on to a multidisciplinary career exploring the intersections of technology and the built environment.

“I have a habit of just following my nose,” he said. His nose has led him to the field of landscape architecture, to innovate in design practice, to exploring emerging technologies changing the world.

“I’ve always kind of lived at the boundaries of disciplines. It’s always been hard for me to box myself into a hyper specificity of any given profession,” he said.

Design Meets Technology

Now an incoming faculty member at Utah State University, Fernberg’s research interests explore the intersection of technology and landscape architecture. Part of the landscape architecture & environmental planning department, he also teaches and conducts research with the Institute for Land, Water, and Air, a policy think tank affiliated with the university and the state of Utah. Additionally, he has a role in the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence, an interdisciplinary multi-domain lab that aims to solve global issues, including geopolitics, biosecurity, climate change, the emergent threat of using technology for conflict, and more.

“I work with a cross-disciplinary team of experts working to explore, anticipate, and solve the world’s most wicked problems,” Fernberg said.

Fernberg also works with the Visualization, Instrumentation, and Virtual Interaction Design (VIVID) Design Laboratory, which aims to bring “the best in class of technology” to spatial design and planning research.

“It’s fun to be able to work in a place with access to AI computing, geospatial modeling, drones and UAVs, and VR headsets, and to put these tools in people’s hands from all across the university,” he said.

His career path has taken him from professional practice to higher education, exploring a range of fields. After he graduated from LSU he moved to San Francisco to work at RHAA Landscape Architecture + Planning firm, where numerous fellow LSU landscape architecture graduates practice.

He decided to advance his research and pursue a PhD at Utah State University, studying in the landscape architecture and environmental planning department. He met his PhD advisor Brent Chamberlain through Mark Boyer, former director of the LSU RRSLA. (Chamberlain is a computational environmental planner)

“Since my time at LSU, I was really interested in the intersection between technology and landscape,” Fernberg said. “While I was working at different firms – engineering, architecture, landscape and planning firms – I was seeing this increasing role of new technologies. And so I had that bug [of interest] in me while in practice, and when I went back to get my PhD.”

During his PhD, Fernberg quickly became interested in the fast-evolving applications of AI and “delved in” to the emerging field of study. He was awarded the 2023 Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership, to study AI in landscape architecture.

Next, he took a position as Director of Digital Innovation at OJB Landscape Architecture (Office of Jim Burnett) in San Diego, where he helped the firm advance technological aspirations. Fernberg is now helping to cofound a tech startup for the nursery industry called Bloomlogic, trying to help problems with supply chain, logistics, and upstream management of one of the main design mediums of landscape architecture: plants.

Rooted in Landscape Architecture

Fernberg’s start in the field of landscape architecture began “in the real late stage” of his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young University, he said. “Right before I was finishing undergrad, I had figured out that urban design was very interesting to me,” he said.

He had learned this “largely due to one of my past lives as an entertainer on cruise ships (I’ve worked random jobs ranging from Disney performer to librarian assistant in the Library of Congress). On ships, I would wake up each day in a new city, immersed in a new set of streets and public spaces and would be inspired by the many different ways they were laid out,” he shared. “At some point, I made the realization that there were people who made decisions about those layouts, whether formally or informally. It took a lot of searching through majors and specialities until the urban design class finally made things click.”

Interested in coastal studies, he came across the LSU MLA program basically “Googling,” he said with a laugh. “I read about the Coastal Sustainability Studio (now called the Coastal Ecosystem Design Studio) affiliated with the LSU College of Art & Design, which is what originally drew me to do my MLA at LSU.”

So he came to campus. “I visited [the LSU RRSLA] and there was this sense that you’re able to get an education on par with any of the other big great schools that you hear about, but also really grounded in the practice of landscape architecture and the fundamentals of design. It has both a rigorous structure and there’s this freedom to define your own path there, if you choose.”

“I knew I would get both the bread and butter of what the profession is, but you also have opportunities to explore and be able to reinvent whatever it is you do in your career.”

The LSU RRSLA has a warm and supportive community, he said. “Throughout my whole time in my MLA, I always felt that at the core of it, the faculty wanted my success – they wanted me to do well. I went deep, gained an understanding of what landscape architecture is and has been, but I could also see places where I could go with it. And I gained a skill set that has been transferrable across fields.”

LSU’s landscape architecture program trains students with a solid foundation in the principles of design, all the way through the progression of history and theories of design, he said. “At LSU you learn all the important procedural skills that you need to be a landscape architect,” he said. “You learn how to use CAD and all the relevant design programs, and of course the fundamental principles of drawing that were taught in foundation studios. So right away in practice, you can show up to the office and if someone asks you, ‘can you do this kind of thing?’ – and the answer is yes, easy.”

At the same time, learning how to think more critically about the relationship between design and place, and the framework of being in “dialogue with a landscape has a huge impact on the way I approach practice, the way I approach my research and teaching and pretty much everything I do,” Fernberg said.
“And it goes beyond landscape architecture.”

Where Stately Oaks and Broad Magnolias Shade Inspiring Halls

Originally from Southern California, Fernberg was instantly drawn to LSU’s dappled campus. “Under the shade of these massive live oak trees, it is a cool place,” he said. “And the people are super warm and welcoming, and have no problem just delving right into the heart of a good, meaty conversation with you, in a genuine way. I always appreciated those things, being a part of the community there.”

Inspirational professors, transformative studios, and opportunities to travel are among the most memorable aspects of his time at LSU.

“I have so many great memories of my time at LSU,” Fernberg said. “I remember my first year, first semester studio with Professor Emeritus Van Cox, which was completely unforgettable. It was at once the greatest orientation to landscape architecture and also the greatest orientation to Louisiana and life in Baton Rouge.”

“Another fond memory from over the years was our final year’s studio with my cohort, when we traveled with Professor Bruce Sharky to Portugal. That was amongst the last trips that Bruce led, and it was so special. It was the embodiment of Bruce’s ideal studio: travel, culture and design. How do those things all fit together? It was incredible. We were all just walking around southern Portugal sketching it, talking about it, identifying potential projects. Then he took us through a completely freeform studio where the main theme was: how can you apply all the skills you’ve come up with over the past 2 1/2 years together and apply them to interesting issues and problems, and how can you grow as a person because of it?”

See photos.

Professor Sharky passed away in 2023 and left a profound impact on the generations of LSU students that he taught. “I really miss Bruce deeply,” Fernberg said. “He’s a wonderful, incredible human being, and he had a huge impact on our education.”

Sharky’s enduring legacy lives on, in the many landscape architects that he taught, now practicing across the globe.

For the Future

For future aspiring landscape architects and students deciding whether to pursue graduate education, Fernberg advises, “When you pick your master’s degree, ask yourself, ‘what are possible trajectories I could see myself on, and does this potential program seem to equip me with the skills needed for any of those trajectories?’ Do you want to help design the biggest, most interesting, transformational public park of the century – or pen the public policy of the century? Or perhaps represent fantastical landscapes for a movie studio? Or make science documentaries about our changing planet?”

“Ask yourself, what do you want to do, or what could you possibly do?”

For lifelong learners like Phillip Fernberg, the possibilities are endless.

 

Learn more about the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture.