Michael Ezban

Speaker at the Teaching the Arts in the Age of A.I. Symposium

Michael Ezban, RA, ASLA is an architect, landscape designer, author, and educator. His work is focused on the design of landscapes and buildings that mediate relations between humans and nonhuman animals.

Ezban is the author of Aquaculture Landscapes: Fish Farms and the Public Realm (Routledge, 2019), which explores the landscape architecture of farms, reefs, parks, and cities that are designed to entwine the lives of fish and humans. The book was awarded the 2020 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize, an honor bestowed to books that make a significant contribution to the study of landscape design.

Ezban's essays, chapters, and speculative works on aquaculture landscapes, waterfowl hunting grounds, and equestrian facilities have been published internationally in journals including Places, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, Landscape Architecture Frontiers, Scenario Journal, PLAT, Dimensions; and books including Studio Ecologies (2023); Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan (2017), Dynamic Patterns (2017), Projective Ecologies (2014), and Healthy Stables by Design (2013).

His research on aquaculture and waterfowling has been supported by a number of institutions, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, where he served in residence as the 2014 Maeder-York Family Fellow in Landscape Studies, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, which funded his international survey of aquaculture landscapes through the Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship in 2013. 

Ezban holds a Master in Landscape Architecture with distinction from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture with distinction from the University of Michigan. He is currently an Associate Clinical Professor and Assistant Director of Graduate Architecture at the University of Maryland, School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation.