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Josh Kover was named a finalist for the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) 2026 Olmsted Scholars Program representing Rutgers University. Josh wants to help people help their own communities to tackle issues related to climate change because he believes that the scale that makes change happen is community-by-community.

Josh’s thesis addresses urban forestry and the importance of community stewardship. While earning his MLA, Josh designed and planted a tiny forest (3,000 trees) at Rutgers. He used a portion of his LAF award to visit the Alnarp Landscape Laboratory in Sweden–an interdisciplinary project that bridges landscape architecture, forestry, and ecology where theories of urban vegetation design are tested directly in the environment. This visit produced a section of his thesis, Leveraging Attention Through ‘Magic’, which contends that “design is just one way we can leverage ‘magic’…[because] magic exists in the surreal, the exaggerated, and abstract versions of the way we sense.” (Kover, 2026) 

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Carolyn Ehrlich, Chief of Staff, Woodbridge Township, is also host of the local TV show Greenable Woodbridge. Wolfram was a guest on the October show. Together, they discuss the vital role of sustainable landscape architecture, urban planning, community stewardship, and how Rutgers University collaborates with Woodbridge Township to build resilient public spaces.

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Haemee is inviting the Newark community to help shape The City in Notes, a more-than-100-foot mural inspired by the music and legacy of Newark jazz icons . At the upcoming workshop, participants will listen to Woody Shaw’s The Moontrane and translate their emotional responses into color, contributing directly to a mural that will become part of NJPAC’s new Cooperman Family Arts Education and Community Center in 2027.

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The event “Ecologies in Motion: Nature, Movement and the More-Than-Human City ” explores how we can activate, care for, and thrive alongside living urban landscapes.

RULA faculty Anette Freytag presents her work with AIR Collaborative and her perspective on plants in the city amongst Detroit community leaders, artists, and urban designers

Program

• 4:30pm – Performance
• 5:15pm – Public conversation
• 6:30pm – Networking
• 7:30pm – End

Check out the full program.

Ecologies in Motion: Nature, Movement and the More-Than-Human City

Urban nature is often treated as somewhere else: a park, forest, or preserve that people must leave their neighborhoods to reach. Even when cities add green space, the emphasis is often on what the landscape looks like rather than the relationships, experiences, and forms of life it makes possible. What changes when forests, meadows, native plants, and habitat are woven into everyday urban life? Once these living environments exist, how do we move with them, learn from them, renew within them, create inside them, care for them, and allow other forms of life to flourish?

Ecologies in Motion brings together artists, foresters, designers, and community members to rethink urban nature, and ask how cities can be designed for a more-than-human community of people, pollinators, birds, plants, soil, and more.

The program begins with a site-responsive dance performance by Wayne State University students directed by Biba Bell, with live music by Matthew Daher, within the pocket forest and living landscape of Kintsugi Village. Following the performance, five speakers will explore the relationship between the design of living environments and the ways we experience them. Together, they will explore what becomes possible when nature is woven into everyday city life — when people are invited not simply to observe green spaces, but to move through them, interact with them, and help care for them. Attendees will leave with a new understanding of their surroundings and how they can participate in shaping them.

Ecologies in Motion is part of Living Loop, a Brightside Collective initiative during Detroit Month of Design.

When
Monday, September 14, 2026
4:30 PM – 7:30 PM

Where
Kintsugi Village Detroit, USA
2020 14th St
Detroit, MI 48216

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Student Designs for a Revolutionary Westfield

Exhibit: August 27 – October 17, Storefront Ortho Care, 10 Prospect St

Rutgers landscape architecture students explored designs for the Westfield section of the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail during spring semester 2026.  Four concepts for enduring and accessible outdoor spaces that combine recreation and history were explored.

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Through a Memorandum of Understanding with the New Jersey School of Conservation (SOC), located within Stokes State Forest, the Rutgers University School of Environmental and Biological Sciences has agreed to cooperate on both scientific research and environmental education initiatives. SOC received a grant from the New Jersey Department of Education, the Climate Change Learning Collaborative and is serving as a hub for k-12 teacher training. This past August four students from the Department of Landscape Architecture helped facilitate a two-day workshop at SOC. Pictured above are Chris Antar, Anna Grookett, Aiko Kordan and Irem Kara. The students presented their projects from their Environmental Planning Studio, as examples of how to think through the process of resilient planning and design. They then led planning charets for climate related issues at the SOC in the afternoon.

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As part of coLAB Arts’ Art City 2026, Haemee Han will present The Plush Line, a new public art installation that reimagines the familiar fence as a place of gathering, play, and exchange. Constructed as a series of oversized soft fence segments, the installation invites visitors to sit, lean, hug, and interact with an object that is traditionally associated with separation. Supported by funding through the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) A.R.T. – Phase II Grant Program, the project also invites New Brunswick residents to contribute short audio recordings that will become embedded within the installation, creating a collective portrait of the city through its voices, stories, and everyday memories.

Han will develop the project throughout the summer and early fall, with an Artist Talk + Project Preview on August 7 at 4:00 PM at coLAB Arts Studio (6 Kirkpatrick Street, New Brunswick). The installation will be completed in late September ahead of the Art City Festival on October 18. Community participation is now open, and residents are invited to share a short recording in any language as part of the project.

The Plush Line is an upcoming public art installation by artist Haemee Han presented as part of
coLAB Arts’ Art City Festival on October 18.
A giant plush fence will be filled with the voices of the New Brunswick community, and we’d love yours to be part of it.

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Rutgers SEBS/NJAES Newsroom: “Under the guidance of Stephen Kristoph, a longtime OCPE instructor and instructor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, the teaching garden was designed by Danielle Lohrman, a junior in that major. The student team the built the garden also included Solana Garcia, Kaitlin Gotting, Addison Cheney, Andy Garcia, Olivia Sheehan and David Ackerman”. Read more…

A Legacy of Generosity: New Teaching Garden Expands Hands-on Learning Opportunities