Episode Summary

Landscape Architect Nina Chase, sits down with Jef Szi for a terrific exploration of her work imagining and designing public spaces. Nina’s easy and honest expertise deepens our view on what fosters Social Cohesion. She helps surface the amazing, often understated, network of relationships connected to an everyday discipline shaping our lives.

With an abundance of talent and inspiration, Nina teaches us the important role architects of public spaces play in our history and our future. With her unique understanding of cities and communities across Middle-America, she exemplifies the powerful capacity landscape architecture has to subtly re-imagine and redefine the common spaces that anchor us.

What we ultimately find in Nina’s work are the seeds for better-connected communities, healthier and more well-adjusted humans, and a closer connection with the natural world—especially the crucial role of trees.

In It’s Not For You, we find a refreshing power in good-hearted folks like Nina, and her colleagues, who are endeavoring to shape what comes next, designing with clear-eyed care for the web of life and a sensible commitment to the needs of future generations.

We find a sober reminder, our role is to plan and plant for a future that will carry on beyond our us.

About Nina Chase:

Nina Chase is a landscape architect and Founding Principal of Merritt Chase. Her work focuses on creating meaningful, public spaces across Middle America. Born and raised in West Virginia, Nina graduated from West Virginia University and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She spent her early career in Boston designing and planning notable public parks and open spaces. Today, Nina leads Merritt Chase’s urban work, planning and designing public parks, plazas, waterfronts, and cultural districts. Nina is dedicated to the design community through teaching, writing, and advocacy. She frequently lectures and serves as a design critic nationally and internationally. Nina is formerly an adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon's School of Architecture and an emeritus board member of the Landscape Architecture Foundation. Nina is currently the Co-Chair of the Harvard Graduate School of Design Alumni Council and a member of the Harvard Alumni Association Board.