FORGE Landscape Architecture is a research and design studio committed to sustaining life through reparative action.

We design gardens, communities, civic spaces, farms, prairies, and forests to amplify collaborative and reciprocal entanglements between humans and diverse forms of life on the planet.

In every project, we begin by asking: what does it mean to design regeneratively?

Phoebe Lickwar MLA, FAAR, PLA, Founding Principal

Phoebe Lickwar is founding principal of Forge Landscape Architecture and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the recipient of the 2022 Garden Club of America Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture.

Phoebe is a registered landscape architect whose experience in the design and construction of culturally significant gardens and civic landscapes includes the National World War I Memorial at Pershing Park in Washington D.C., the Newport Beach Civic Center Park, the Glenstone Museum, and the National September 11 Memorial in New York. She seeks to push the boundaries of design through a creative collaboration with plant life, synthesizing regenerative strategies and aesthetic experience. 

Phoebe’s recent work explores the deep relationship between agroecology and design, recovering farming as a design practice deeply embedded in contemporary social and ecological crises. She is co-author, with Roxi Thoren, of the book Farmscape: The Design of Productive Landscapes, which describes the history of agriculture within landscape architecture and reveals the diversity of current design practices that have shaped productive farms as sites of beauty, community, ecological conservation, remediation, and pleasure. Her current research focuses on climate resilient agroforestry and the restoration of degraded agricultural land.

Phoebe’s writing and photographic works have been published in Places Journal, LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, and the Journal of Landscape Architecture. Her photographic work has been featured in international juried exhibitions at Rayko Gallery in San Francisco, the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, Sol Mednick Gallery in Philadelphia, Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, Copley Society of Art in Boston, and the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock.

Phoebe graduated with honors from Harvard College, where she studied art history and visual and environmental studies. She received a master’s degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Heidi Loosen, MLA

Heidi is a landscape designer with a Bachelor's degree in visual art and a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley. She has worked with a number of distinguished firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, including John Northmore Roberts & Associates, Daphne Edwards Landscape Architecture, and SHED Landscape Architecture.

Heidi is drawn to the heterogeneity of work within Landscape Architecture - variable sites, scales, and forces forming each place and project to be distinctive. Working on teams designing a range of landscape types, Heidi approaches each project with an interest in local social and ecological communities, a drive for design simplicity, and creative problem-solving skills. Heidi believes that the best landscapes we can create are those that engage the senses in the present, yet hold a long view - landscapes that can weather, resist and regenerate in the face of climate change.

Outside of work, Heidi enjoys reading the “sense of place” stories that she finds in the Little Free Libraries around her neighborhood. She also loves dogs, cats, hiking, and hands-on projects like building prairie gardens and furniture.

Nicki Fry

Nicki has always been captivated by the power of narrative to shape the world. In an era of human-driven climate change and biodiversity loss, Nicki is interested in re-evaluating the collective stories we tell about our relationships with nature and one another to build a more sustainable and just future. Nicki augments her narrative-driven approach to landscape design with lessons learned from the field of cultural ecology and an ethos of thrift.

Nicki holds a BA in American Studies with a minor in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. She is pursuing her Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to landscape design, Nicki is an avid reader and tennis player and enjoys exploring the Central Texas landscape with her dog, Fen.

Skylar Brown

Skylar is passionate about landscape architecture for its interdisciplinary nature of design, site analysis, and ecology with the intricate patterns of urban life. She is interested in revitalizing landscapes and underutilized urban spaces. She aims to create vibrant, socially engaging spaces through sustainable landscape design.

Skylar has a Bachelor's degree in Education from the University of North Texas in Denton. Currently, she is pursuing a Master's in Landscape Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.

Outside of her academic and design pursuits, Skylar finds joy in reading, printmaking, and enjoying game nights with friends.