Melissa Cate Christ is a registered landscape architect, a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Director of transverse studio, a collaborative practice which concentrates on contemporary mechanisms of urban intervention at the juncture of landscape, culture, urbanism, and infrastructure. Her design work and writing have been recognized and  featured in international competitions, publications and exhibitions. Recent work includes global food network research & writing, installation and garden design, participatory workshops and events, community advocacy and speculative work concerned with memory, time and the ecology of agency in the landscape. Prior to teaching at PolyU, Melissa was an Assistant Professor of the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong and a designer at Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd, where she was the project manager for CityCenter DC, a 10 acre mixed use development in downtown Washington DC which includes a public plaza and alley over structure, a public park, and extensive and intensive green roofs on 4 buildings. She has also worked as an urban designer at Dutoit, Allsop Hillier, and as an instructor and design critic at the University of Toronto and the University of Washington. Melissa holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree from St. John’s College. A selection of her recent work can be found at transverse studio.

melissa@transversestudio[dot]com

Seth Denizen is a researcher and design practitioner trained in landscape architecture and evolutionary biology.

He graduated in 2007 from McGill University with a B.Sc, where he studied the Pliocene evolutionary biology and neotropical ecology of the Panamanian Isthmus. Since receiving his MLA from the University of Virginia in 2012, his research in architecture has focused on the aesthetics of scientific representation, madness and public parks, the political economy of construction waste, and most recently the design of taxonomies for the mapping and historical analysis of urban soil.

Recent built works include the 2012 set design for Teatre Akadèmia in Barcelona, and Foam Dome Home: a modular dome designed and digitally fabricated from construction waste.