Prof. Mary Pat McGuire, PLA

I’m a Landscape Architect and Associate Professor at the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign where I also serve as Dean’s Fellow for Research in the College of Fine & Applied Arts. I’m deeply interested in the transformation of post-industrial, post-modern cities, particularly where an abundance of infrastructure is working counter to natural systems capacity to provide landscape resilience and beauty. In 2022, I founded Depave Chicago to support communities in actively removing and transforming pavement into healing and life-supportive landscapes, from which our pilot project with The Montessori School of Englewood was exhibited in the 5th Chicago Architecture Biennial. I’m licensed to practice landscape architecture in Illinois and Virginia, and previously licensed in California. Prior to my academic turn, I practiced landscape architecture for Peter Walker and Partners in the San Francisco Bay area and Conservation Design Forum in Chicago.

Research & Teaching

My research and teaching in landscape architecture focuses on design of the material, ecological, infrastructural, and social ground of cities. The City of Chicago and the Chicago-Calumet Region have been rich sites for original surface/sub-surface mapping, urban soils investigations, and community-scale design projects to address urban flooding which I’ve made publicly available on the Water Lab website. This work led to my founding of Depave Chicago, a new initiative to work directly with communities to transform paved land into healthy and healing places that support life. My work has increased attention on depaving yes, but at a deeper level the goals of this work are on reconnecting and regenerating landscapes all around us so that communities adapt and thrive in a changing climate. These urban landscape topics and design transformation methods form the basis of my design studios and seminars so that students may learn to see new unexpected opportunities for design in their educational work and later in practice as they serve communities as landscape architects. 

Public Engagement, Collaboration, Outcomes

Through deep engagement and collaboration with geologists, engineers, social scientists, NGOs, CBOs, federal agencies, municipalities, schools, communities, and artists, our work has led to some tremendous outcomes.

• Since 2021, over $10Million in green stormwater infrastructure investments have been made in the Calumet Region based on two-years of IL/IN Sea Grant funded-research and a creative, committed, and award-winning Design Workshop of undergraduate and graduate students, and thanks to Matt Buerger of Farnsworth Group for stewarding and championing our approach.
• In 2022, the planting of a mile-long air-quality, tree buffer was initiated throughout city-owned vacant land in Whiting, Indiana to combat air pollution from the BP Oil Refinery, in collaboration with the City of Whiting, the U.S. Forest Service, and Student Conservation Association based on the work of my students in LA437 Regional Design Senior BLA Studio.
• In 2023, my IL-Extension collaborators and I created a seminal compendium website of design and planning guidance for green stormwater infrastructure—Illinois Groundwork—to disseminate research-based design guidance for professionals, public agencies, and communities across the state and region.
• Since 2023, I and my research assistants have been collaborating with Chicago Public Schools, EPA Region 5, Chicago Region Trees Initiative, Environmental Law & Policy Center, Chicago DOT, Illinois DOT, and Jensen Elementary on a ground-breaking vegetation air-quality buffer program for public elementary schools located next to highways in Chicago.
• And since 2022, I’ve been working with graduate research assistants and Depave (Portland), The Montessori School of Englewood, Chicago Public Schools, Indigo Ecological Design, and Geosyntec Engineers to pilot Depave Chicago’s first project in Chicago. In partnership with Depave (Portland) and network affiliates, we’re planning the first national Depave Summit to take place in Chicago summer of 2026.

This and related work has been funded, supported, and possible through the Walder Foundation, IL/IN National Sea Grant (NOAA), Chicago Region Trees Initiative (Morton Arboretum), EPA-Region 5, ELPC, U.S. Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, Wright-Ingraham Institute, Illinois Campus Research Board, IL-Extension Collaboration Grant, and the Department of Landscape Architecture Wadsworth Endowment Fund.