Kate Orff to Receive the Tau Sigma Delta 2025 Gold Medal & Deliver Closing Keynote at ACSA113

For Immediate Release:
Washington, D.C. October 25, 2024 — The Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society in Architecture and Allied Arts (TSD), along with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), is pleased to announce Kate Orff of SCAPE Studio as the recipient of the 2025 Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal and the closing keynote at the ACSA113 Annual Meeting.

The Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal is awarded by the organization’s Grand Chapter to a professional with a record of high distinction in design in the field of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, or the Allied Arts. The 2025 award will be presented during the ACSA 113th Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, March 20-22, 2025. The TSD Gold Medal will be awarded on Saturday, March 22, where Orff will present the closing keynote.

Kate Orff, RLA, FASLA, is the Founding Partner of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design practice headquartered in New York with offices in New Orleans and San Francisco. Widely recognized as a leading voice in landscape architecture, urban design, and climate adaptation in a global context, Orff is known for advancing complex, creative, and collaborative work that advances broad environmental and social prerogatives.

Among her many accolades, Kate became the first landscape architect to receive the MacArthur Fellowship in 2017. In 2019, she was elevated to the ASLA Council of Fellows, accepted a National Design Award in Landscape Architecture from Cooper Hewitt, and was named a “Hero of the Harbor” by the Waterfront Alliance. In 2020, she was named Urbanist of the Year by The Architect’s Newspaper. Orff was also named in 2023’s TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the most influential people in the world.

Kate is the author of several books including Toward an Urban Ecology (Monacelli, 2016); co-author, with photographer Richard Misrach, of Petrochemical America (Aperture, 2012); and a contributor to All We Can Save (Penguin Random House, 2020), a bestselling anthology of women climate leaders. She has been profiled extensively for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, National Geographic, and many more.

Orff is currently the Director of the Urban Design Program, Co-Director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes (CRCL), and Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). She also sits on the Commission on Accelerating Climate Action for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Advisory Board for Urban Ocean Lab, a policy think tank.