Patty Stevens

Biography

Patty Stevens has been practicing landscape architecture and environmental planning since graduating with a masters degree from Utah State University in 1981. She received a BA in Geography from the University of Cincinnati. Throughout her 40 year career, she has worked in private practice and with governmental and non-profit organizations. While in private practice she served as a principal of a multi-disciplinary firm providing planning, landscape architecture and architectural services throughout the US. After private practice, she served as the Chief of Park Planning for Cleveland Metroparks, a regional park district, and the Director of Capital Projects for the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Additionally, she is an adjunct professor at Kent State University, College of Architecture and Environmental Design, teaching Site Analysis and Design.

Her work focuses on recreation and open space systems, often revitalizing underutilized land into vibrant community assets. Responding to the post-industrial, slow-growth midwest setting of northeast Ohio, her work regenerates landscapes into places of community pride. Collaborating with artists, cultural and natural resource experts, her projects integrate interpretation, environmental education and ecological restoration. She believes places have an intrinsic potential to regenerate people and place. She utilizes the planning process to discover how projects can positively contribute to the larger systems in which they are nested. Engaging the community in a discovery of a site’s vocation, her designs aim to reveal the inherent potential of a place.