About peg

PEG office of landscape + architecture is an award-winning design and research office based in Philadelphia, PA, led by Karen M’Closkey and Keith VanDerSys. Their work is recognized for the creative exploration of emerging media, focusing specifically on how new modeling software and the increased accessibility of geospatial technologies provide opportunities to access new kinds of patterns and, therefore, new ways of designing and understanding landscapes and our place within them.

Interpretations of nature, environments, and landscapes involve various technologies and practices that connect the material world with representations. These interpretations encompass symbolic representations, such as geometry and form; behavioral models of processes, including numeric models and simulations; and Earth surface representations like maps and classifications. PEG’s work in these areas has been recognized through publication in 60 design books and magazines and numerous competitions and awards, including the prestigious Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers and a PEW Fellowship in the Arts. Their work has been showcased in 20 exhibitions and, most recently, received a World Landscape Architecture Award (2021) and three National American Society of Landscape Architects Awards (2019, 2020, 2025), the latter for their work as EMLab.

M’Closkey and VanDerSys are guest editors of LA+ GEO (2020) and LA+ SIMULATION (2016), and authors of Dynamic Patterns: Visualizing Landscapes in a Digital Age (2017). They are curators of two symposia—Instruments of Change” (2022) and “Simulating Natures” (2015). Their latest book, Media Matters in Landscape Architecture, includes 14 chapters written by contributors from various fields discussing the material and technical aspects of environmental media and their interrelationships.

 

Bios

Karen M’Closkey

Karen M’Closkey, founding partner of PEG office of landscape + architecture, is a licensed landscape architect and associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design.

M’Closkey is the author of Unearthed: The Landscapes of Hargreaves Associates (2013), which received the prestigious J.B. Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies. She is also co-curator and co-editor of the symposium, exhibit, and book Design with Nature Now (2019). In addition to the journals, books, and essays she has co-authored/edited with Keith, she is editor-in-chief of the award-winning LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture. Her most recent edited volumes are LA+ BOTANIC (Spring 2024), LA+ EXOTIQUE (Fall 2024), LA+ SENSE (Spring 2025), and the forthcoming LA+ ENVIRONMENT (Fall 2025) and LA+ MEDIA (Spring 2026).

M’Closkey received the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture (2012–2013) from the American Academy in Rome. She received a Masters in Landscape Architecture with distinction from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Architecture with distinction from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).

Keith VanDerSys

Keith VanDerSys, founding partner of PEG office of landscape + architecture, is a senior lecturer in landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. He co-founded Penn’s Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab) with Sean Burkholder and Karen M’Closkey.

VanDerSys’s research and teaching explore the applicability of new media technologies to site applications. His most recent focus is on environmental modeling and remote sensing related to the design and monitoring of coastal environments. His work explores the relationships between data collection methods, the ways this information is visualized, and the opportunities and challenges of interpreting images, particularly in relation to hydrology, sediment, and vegetation in salt marshes. He has developed workflow methods to better represent these fluid landscapes, including combining the computational capacities of geospatial analysis (GIS), computational fluid dynamics (Aquaveo SRH-2d, SLOSH, Butterfly/ Openfoam), and parametric software (Grasshopper).

VanDerSys received a Master of Arts in Critical Studies in Architectural Culture from UCLA and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Detroit Mercy.

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