Micah Stanek is currently a Lecturer in Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to teaching core design studios, he teaches landscape architecture history as well as research methods and practices. He collaborates with willing neighbors and forgotten sites in St. Louis. Intersecting the frameworks and tools of the artist, the designer, and the conservationist, he works on fallow land, by hand, demonstrating the power of the extensive—cultivation with minimal expense. A process of digging and casting unearths turbulent social histories of development and demolition. The reduction of a typical maintenance regime invites ecological diversity. An adaptive, active form of landscape architecture multiplies social and environmental possibilities in the city.
Micah began designing for film and theater at Northwestern University. He began landscape research after working as a docent and farmhand at Navdanya Biodiversity Conservation Farm in northern India. He worked with CEL during 2011 and 2012. He has also worked with MU Architecture in Paris and SCAPE Landscape Architecture in New York.