Perspectives: Aiman Duckworth
Aiman Duckworth, PLA, is a Senior Landscape Architect and Ecologist at Biohabitats.
February 2025
Tell us about yourself.
Rimaykullayki. (Hello, I speak to you politely.)
I am a stepfather. A life partner. A son. A landscape architect. An ecologist.
My people are Quechua from the Andes, Spanish by way of Peru, and British and Polish by way of the United States. Quechua (Runasimi) was the primary language of the Inca, which might be a more familiar name to some. I live in the Chesapeake Bay region, in the traditional territory of the Susquehannock and the Piscataway.
I studied landscape architecture at the University of Maryland and ecology at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. I have been in the profession for over two decades, more than a decade at EDAW, which later became AECOM, and almost a decade at Biohabitats. At Biohabitats we focus exclusively on regenerative planning and design, ecological restoration, conservation, and climate adaptation and resilience. I get to practice with an incredibly talented team at Biohabitats including other landscape architects and ecologists, ecological planners, engineers, biologists, soil scientists, geomorphologists, and GIS specialists. We also have the good fortune to team with firms of other skilled landscape architects, architects, and planners on some very meaningful projects.
My work includes assessment, planning, and design of habitats and living systems to enhance and regenerate ecological and cultural vitality. Those projects are at the scale of regions, counties, cities, neighborhoods, and sites. That ranges from the Metro Denver Regional Conservation Assessment, a large-scale conservation and habitat connectivity plan for 6,000 square miles in Colorado, to affordable housing of just over half an acre in a Pittsburgh community where we are helping to maximize biodiversity potential and water systems resiliency. I am also leading Biohabitats’ focus in working in service with Indigenous nations and communities, supporting Indigenous sovereignty and rematriation — the process of restoring the sacred relationships between Indigenous peoples and their ancestral lands.
What drew you to landscape architecture?
Like many in my generation and before, landscape architecture was not a profession that I knew in high school. In my first year of college, I came across Landscape Architecture Magazine and an issue featuring Jones and Jones. They were discussing their work on the Nooksack River Plan and how they approached the project as if the river was the client, designing for and with the river. That struck an instant chord with my personal and ancestral understanding of a living earth — that animals, plants, water, air, and stone are all alive and all our relatives. Not just in a poetic way, but as a tangible reality of what it means to be a human being on this planet. I was intrigued and inspired by that potential in landscape architecture. So, I made my way into the profession and have centered my practice on designing for and with the living earth — for communities, inclusive of humans and our other relatives.
What are some of the other values that you try to center in your work?
There have always been vital and necessary roles in human societies of managing and working with habitats, of reading landscapes, of listening to and learning from our more-than-human relatives, of translating and mediating natural forces, of keeping stories and history, of protecting and healing the living earth, and of supporting the health of our communities. This has been a perennial exercise for countless thousands of years. There are many bodies of knowledge and professions that continue these functions in both the arts and the sciences. I think that landscape architecture can contribute significantly to these aspects of human life in ways that are urgently needed today. Our inspiration, our health, and our survival are woven in ecosystems and landscapes.
In Quechua we say “ayni.” Ayni is reciprocity. It is the animating exchange of the universe. Between humans, all other beings, and the living earth, in all combinations. So are we living in reciprocity? On any project, are we working in reciprocity? Is a plan or a design acting in reciprocity? Not just for our limit of disturbance, or our site boundary, or our local community, but for a greater community?
How do you connect your interest in Indigenous landscapes (cloud forests, for example) to your work in urban settings?
Well, cloud forests have a special place in my heart, in part because of the times of my life when I have lived in or visited them, and also what I have learned from them. They are incredibly biodiverse ecosystems and a very small proportion of global forest cover. Cloud forests are a transition between lowland tropical or subtropical forest and mountain highlands, often on the slopes of mountains, and the combination of climate, topography, and vegetation makes clouds and fog. In effect, the trees reach up and catch the clouds. Epiphytes (air plants) are common in these landscapes. They are plants that grow on trees outside of the soil of the forest floor and they get water and nutrients from the moist, rich air and rain of the cloud forest. In many ways every surface of the cloud forest is generating life and often in very creative ways.
In the Andes, the sacred city of Machu Picchu is in the cloud forest, recognizing a very special and specific geography of mountains and springs in that ecosystem. Machu Picchu is one example of an ancient urbanism that transformed the landscape and was also very much in reciprocity with the mountains and the cloud forest. There are many examples of Indigenous science in the world that have guided communities and Indigenous nations to sustain significant populations of humans while also being supportive of all life.
Much of my work and past graduate research has focused on landscape ecology and urban ecology, analyzing, planning, and designing along the full rural to urban gradient. In thinking of contemporary cities and our work in them today, I want to preface that large, intact, and well-connected ecosystems are critical to protecting biodiversity and life on this planet. Large, unfragmented habitats are not common within many urban municipal boundaries today. It is also not the case that dense cities are over here and large, intact habitats are over there and that they will live completely separate existences. There are biophysical, social, and economic processes at planetary scales that require us to give attention to the full spectrum of landscapes and habitats and the ways in which they are interconnected.
The past 30 or so years of urban ecology research has shown that cities don’t have to be biodiversity voids. Habitats and species don’t obey our imaginary legal boundaries. They have their own agency and territories. Cities often fall far short of their actual potential for ecological function. One approach we take is to understand the ecological functions of existing conditions, the functions of the native reference ecosystem — the habitats that would call that site home absent detrimental human impacts, and then we assess how closely we can design to the functions of that reference ecosystem. That may look very similar to what we would recognize as a “natural” native ecosystem, or it may be more biomimetic and create ecological functions in novel ways. Can we be creative like epiphytes in the cloud forest, and think in new ways to support life?
A final thought on this topic: I remember a guest lecture in graduate school, where part of the speaker’s work involved bringing children from a variety of city neighborhoods to an urban nature center. They spoke of a young girl on one of the trips that was enamored to see a bee for the first time. Her neighborhood and her school were so devoid of flora and fauna, and her experience of the living earth was such that she had to travel across the city through this education program to meet a bee for the first time. And this need in that city was not so uncommon. What inhumane conditions are we making for our children and the children of others? And how can we do everything we can to support life, from a cloud forest to a city neighborhood currently barren of vegetation?
How do you think landscape architects can expand their positive impact on the world?
Every project, of every size, for every client, has opportunities to address the challenges of biodiversity loss, climate change, and environmental injustices. They are defining issues of our time and they are intertwined. At Biohabitats, they are central to our work and our purpose.
In Western science we talk about biodiversity, the variety of all life, from blue whales to microorganisms. That can also mean habitat diversity and genetic diversity. But what we are really talking about simply is life. Is our work bringing more life into the world or less? More resilience? More justice? More beauty? More reciprocity with the living earth?
I also think that our profession is in many ways just beginning to ask hard questions about what it means to design and plan on lands of settler colonialism and slavery. How can we be better allies in our work? What responsibility does our profession have to the lands and Indigenous nations where we live and work? What responsibility do our companies have? Our clients? What does change and reconciliation in response to those questions look like?
There are those that have been asking those questions for some time, and a new generation of landscape architects and students that are doing so. We have a long way to go. But I am heartened by those voices being heard more, much more now than when I was entering the profession. The voices I reference include the recent ASLA Call to Action: Co-Create a Future that Heals Land and Culture. In what is now called the Western Hemisphere, over 1,000 Indigenous nations have been planning, designing, and managing ecosystems and landscapes for tens of thousands of years before anyone called themselves a landscape architect. Those ways of being are just as vital now. These topics are still woefully absent from most landscape architecture curricula and practice, with important, notable exceptions. I certainly do not have the answers to all these questions, but I am honored to be listening and learning, to be part of the discussion, and to be building and upholding respectful relationships.
Let’s be good relatives.
Urpichay sonqoy. (Thank you).
LAF's Perspectives interview series showcases landscape architects from diverse backgrounds and identities discussing how they came to the profession and where they see it heading. Any opinions expressed in this interview belong solely to the author. Their inclusion in this article does not reflect endorsement by LAF.
To stay up-to-date on future Perspectives articles as well as LAF programs, events, and funding opportunities, subscribe to LAF emails.
