Illustrating the Natural World: Studio-MLA’s Mía Lehrer on Parks and Gardens, Women's Leadership, and Taking Time to Explore
By Kate Mazade
Born in El Salvador, Mía Lehrer, FASLA, is the founder of Studio-MLA. She graduated from Tufts University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design before building a portfolio of sustainable landscape design that spans civic and cultural infrastructure to private gardens. Mía lectures around the world and was awarded the ASLA LaGasse Medal in 2016. She was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Commission of Fine Arts from 2014-2018.
In her interview with Kate Mazade, Mía talks about the early influences that drew her to Landscape Architecture and how projects can advocate for communities, telling people's stories through water and ecology.
KM: Do you want to tell me a little bit about how your interest in landscape architecture first developed?
ML: I grew up in Central America in the tropics, which has a beautiful exotic landscape, with everything from the ocean, and lakes, to volcanoes, and large tropical trees, with lots of bird life. Everything from hummingbirds to some of the largest of parrots would hang out at our house. I was drawn to landscape. My family also loved art, travel and architecture. Our house was designed by a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was a modern house with a very exotic garden. Design was just something that I was greatly exposed to at an early age.
What did you learn both about the discipline, and about yourself in studying it?
Once I went to undergraduate school, I immediately started delving into tangential professions like planning and geology. Then I truly began narrowing in by reading, and going to lectures. At the Graduate School of Design at Harvard I found myself reunited with landscape architecture through an Olmsted Central Park exhibit where I thought, “Wow, people can draw places within the larger city, create experiences, and use planting and water to create special design features.”
The profession is still, unfortunately, not that well recognized but there are many more practitioners today than there were in the 1970s and 80s. It’s a progressive profession that's gained a lot of heft, based on the challenges of climate change and on people's appreciation of parks, civic spaces, and landscapes.
Natural History Museum at Exposition Park, Living Wall, courtesy of Studio-MLA.
Natural History Museum at Exposition Park, Living Wall, courtesy of Studio-MLA.
I loved what I was learning, and it felt very natural to me to design, create, and go through that messy process that one goes through in this profession —looking at different ideas and layouts and thinking about what people might like to see and experience. I was really drawn to Roberto Burle Marx, the Brazilian landscape architect who is known for exotic works like the Copacabana Beach Promenade, with its black and white swirly paving. He did many things, including sculptures, paintings, fountains and gardens that were amazing. Through my studies and appreciation of landscape architects like Marx, I realized I found something I was passionate about.
I met some really interesting people when I was at the GSD. The chair of the department at the time was Peter Walker, who designed the World Trade Center Memorial. I was in class with people like Martha Schwartz, Cathy Blake, George Hargreaves. Then there was also Cornelia Oberlander out of Vancouver, who was a modernist and the first woman to graduate from the program. Altogether it was an incredible experience, and also where I met my husband, Michael, a fellow architecture student.
That’s amazing. How did you get your start in professional practice?
We graduated in 1978 and 1979 during a recession and moved to the West Coast. We both got jobs at firms in Laguna Beach before we eventually moved to LA. At the time, I had two babies, and the firm was very inflexible about my schedule. I then decided to set up a practice in our home, which is when I started doing gardens.
We quickly met people our own age who were in the movie industry and planning to build their homes. It led to pretty important relationships and great opportunities. We worked with Lucy Fisher and Douglas Wick of Red Wagon Productions, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Sally Field. It allowed me to explore materials, and build really nice projects.
“When you’re running a business, one of the challenges is being able to be taken seriously and having an even playing field.”
How did you move into working in the public realm?
I did a big garden project with Robert Zemeckis up in Montecito in which I learned a lot about materials, construction, and selling ideas and negotiating relationships. It’s no different than working for some of my public clients now. How do you make sure that people get to a place where they're comfortable with a decision? How do you help them figure it out?
I was doing a lot of pro bono work at the time—whether it was for nonprofits that planted trees in schools, or for a poet who created a nonprofit to try to transform the LA River into a people- and habitat-friendly place. We’ve done decades of work on the Los Angeles River, to create a meaningful piece of linear infrastructure that has the possibility to weave the city together, socially, environmentally, and economically. I’ve also worked with an organization called Tree People who had a large property they wanted to turn into a place where people could visit and have a better understanding of the California landscape, a demonstration botanical garden with experiential water elements. It is a wonderful group that organized field trips for students, creating stewards of the future for the city of Los Angeles.
Some of my first projects were playgrounds in under-privileged neighborhoods. We developed ideas on how you could be creative about including swings, slides and places to hide and seek.
Vista Hermosa Park by Studio-MLA. Photography by Hunter Kerhart.
Vista Hermosa Park by Studio-MLA. Photography by Tom Lamb.
Vista Hermosa Park by Studio-MLA. Photography by Tom Lamb.
Within this work, how did the practice evolve?
At the time I was doing schools, I already had four or five people working with me. I had to move out of the house, due to too many people and distractions and the kids being of older age. I moved into a space downtown. It went from home office to a medium sized office in downtown Los Angeles, which started out with 10 people, and now we're 45 people. We’re in a very large warehouse building along the river, which is a perfect COVID-friendly situation. It’s very spacious, and we have a garden outside that we use as an urban ecology laboratory.
After we moved, I started doing parks and collaborating more with teams of engineers and other consultants. I worked on Barnsdall Park, which is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed project in the city, with my husband and architect, Peter Walker. I continued to do schools and branched out to working on university campuses and other types of campuses as well. One of these campus projects was my work on Amgen, a pharmaceutical company. It was interesting to understand the culture and ambition of a place throughout the design process. They wanted to make space for company gatherings, but they also wanted walk loops and places to have outdoor meetings, which we were able to successfully create for them.
Where are you in your career today?
Things have evolved, and now I’m working on larger cultural, institutional projects. I just finished 25 acres of parks and gardens around Inglewood’s Hollywood Park, a mixed-use community with housing, parks, trails, and green infrastructure with the NFL Rams & Chargers SoFi Stadium in the center of the district.
We did Vista Hermosa Park and the Nature Gardens at the Natural History Museum that both work to create ecology and habitat in the urban environment while engaging Angelenos of all ages in a nature wonderland for the mind and senses. Now, we are heavily in construction at the Lucas Museum, a 12-acre park that is really an important milestone project for our firm. These gardens that we're doing are associated with our experience and understanding of the California region.
As for the firm, we are made up of forty-five wonderful people; five of them are actually in San Francisco. With offices in both Southern and Northern California, we are constantly going back and forth and sharing resources. We’re doing some interesting work there too, including an amphitheater at Berkeley, and another amphitheater at Stanford.
“…we look for opportunities to tell the stories that are layered within places—stories of people, neighborhoods, hope and conflict, water, air, ecology, and empowerment.”
That's wonderful. It sounds like you’ve got a lot going on in a lot of different places. Can you talk about some of the biggest challenges that you faced in your career?
To tell you the truth, the biggest challenge as a woman is to be taken seriously as a professional. When you look at the other firms of people who I went to school with, the men have a much deeper portfolio. They started getting projects that I only got 10 years later. When you interview for jobs, somehow being a woman is a factor. The same thing goes with having children. Clients wonder if you’re going to really pay attention or be too distracted by their family responsibilities. I remember for 10 years around the 1980’s and 90’s when I looked at my closet, it was only suits, and I thought, “I can't stand this anymore.” Through conversations with other women, I think it’s easier now. There are more women out there doing great work in this industry and many others. There have obviously been many changes, but that was and continues to be the biggest challenge.
For example, if payments are late—and not two months late, nine months late—you start calling and nothing happens. Then it’s time to call and rattle the cages. But there is the sense is that women are too naggy and bitchy and they don’t stay in their lane, or whatever. They make it incredibly uncomfortable instead of saying, “Oh. I'm sorry, this grant this bond funding that was supposed to already have arrived is not coming for two more months. I'll make sure I'll inform you.”
But you’re running a business, and one of the challenges is being able to be taken seriously and having an even playing field. The talent is there, the delivery is there—the work in construction, keeping it on budget, negotiating, coordinating all the consultants—those are all part of the responsibility. But collecting your fees is an important part of doing business.
Lake Park at Sofi Stadium by Studio-MLA. Photography by Craig Collins.
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, image courtesy MAD Architects.
It is, and it can be very frustrating when people make it hard to complete your job. Switching gears a little bit, whom are you admiring right now and why?
I admire women making a difference through action—those women who break boundaries to create impactful change in this world. Jamie Lee Curtis, Myrna Melgar, Irma R. Muñoz, Barbara Romero, Alina Bodke, and Norma Garcia—the list could go on and on. These women not only serve as powerful role models for all women, but especially for me as I am inspired by their strength and drive in giving all they can to making a difference for communities in the region, and constantly motivating me to do the same.
I am also a commissioner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which is the first-time there’s been an all-female board. They’re all really amazing, very supportive of each other, and really trying to work on equity and inclusion. We’re bringing the landscape architect lens to issues of resiliency while helping secure an environmentally sustainable future for Los Angeles.
There are so many women in my professional and family circle that I admire. When I narrow it down, these are women who come from all backgrounds, whose lives have not always been easy, and whose resilience, tenacity, and dedication create change in my region.
And what kind of change are you trying to create in your region? What is your core mission?
The firm’s core mission is “advocacy by design,” to build vibrant and resilient places that create justice and equity, delight, and prosperity through working collaboratively with nature, transforming places to perform multiple purposes at once, and designing them to adapt with durability for the future.
We see design and the creation of parks, cultural institutions, and open spaces as a way to advocate for communities. We know that government leadership leads to vision, and as we implement that vision, we look for opportunities to tell the stories that are layered within places—stories of people, neighborhoods, hope and conflict, water, air, ecology, and empowerment. All of these matters and all of these play big roles in our projects.
“Be very open minded within the career options that you have…sometimes meaningful work can be a little bit messy…Just explore.”
That’s incredible! What advice do you have for people starting their careers?
Be very open-minded within the career options that you have. Many people graduate and think they have to work at a really high level of design in private practice and then get on the covers of magazines. But sometimes, meaningful work can be a little bit messy. If you’re trying to build pocket parks or work on streets and alleys and trying to bring parts of cities to life and in an era we're all living in right now, you can design beautiful things. They may not make it to the cover of the publication.
You need to find your passion, and to find your passion, you need to explore. Don’t think that where you start is where you’ll end up. Consider working in public practice, parks departments or urban planning. If you work in a parks department, sometimes you get to design at many different scales from a small city park to a larger community or regional park, waterfronts or waterways. Just explore and don’t restrict yourself – give all interesting opportunities a chance in this field, as you never know where it will lead.
Let yourself understand what the options are. Give yourself time to find something that you are passionate about because you’ll be a better designer if you’re working on the types of projects with the types of people that make you tick.
And is that advice different for women in the industry?
I think women may need to be more vocal about what they need and want —especially when you’re younger and need more flexibility because of factors such as young children. If the firm you’re working with does work all over the world and you have to get on a plane every other day, it’s really hard to have work-life balance, especially with children. I believe that's part of being a woman on the go. Technology offers flexibility, however it does not replace in-person creative ideations with teams and clients.