Aroussiak Gabrielian

Aroussiak Gabrielian

Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture + Urbanism and Director of the Landscape Futures Lab, USC School of Architecture

Aroussiak Gabrielian, PhD, FAAR, is a scholar-practitioner working across the fields of Landscape Architecture and Media Arts. Her scholarship focuses on both materialist perspectives on the living world of landscape matter, and the practice of imaging and imagining landscape, addressing both landscape’s material and its representation. As an environmental designer and media artist, Aroussiak works with biological materials, natural systems, and atmospheric phenomena. Her design work aims to torque our imaginaries to help us re-think our interactions with both human and non-human agents on this planet. Aroussiak is a trained futurist and regular consultant on futures oriented design. She is Co-founder and Design Director of foreground design agency, a critical practice based in Los Angeles that aims to dismantle structures of power and privilege that render specific humans, species, and matter silent. Her work on alternative environmental futures has received numerous recent recognitions including, the Emerging Designer Awards from the Design Futures Initiative, the Tomorrowland Projects Foundation Award administered through the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Word Changing Ideas Awards recognized by Fast Company, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. She has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Austin, Portland, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York City, and in venues across Italy, Germany, Spain and China. Aroussiak is currently Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture + Urbanism at the School of Architecture at USC, Affiliate Faculty of Media Arts + Practice at the School of Cinematic Arts at USC, and Director of the newly established Landscape Futures Lab.