Maggie brings multidisciplinary training to the design of public spaces. She earned a BA from the University of Chicago and worked in contemporary art and theater before turning to design. She holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia.
Her design experience includes professional practice and community-based design. As a designer at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, she contributed to design on award-winning projects at a range of scales, including the Brooklyn Naval Cemetery, the Overlook Farm Masterplan, and Olana State Historic Site. As director of Tulane’s Small Center for Collaborative Design, she led community-based design projects in support of a more equitable New Orleans. Under her leadership, the Center developed engagement strategies for youth of all ages, piloted public programming, and fostered relationships across nonprofit, municipal, and grassroots groups.
Professor Hansen’s research draw from theater, gardening, participatory art, and activist methods to reimagine the boundaries of design as a relational practice. She is co-curator of Ditched Schemes, a landscape zine and podcast that explores unrealized projects, creative risk-taking, and notions of success in design. Her book, Transgressive Practices to Transformative Policies: Landscape Change Fast and Slow, presents models of place-based design work that reimagine the boundaries and rules of landscape practice. Her scholarship on participatory methods of design and design teaching has been presented at the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and Architecture Media Politics Society (Amps).
Professor Hansen is an Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was awarded the 2021-22 School of Architecture Award for Outstanding Teaching (Studio). Her students’ design work has been recognized for design excellence through national and state ASLA awards. Prior to joining the UTSOA, she was a Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University and a Guest Studio Professor at Kent State University.