Professor and director of Columbia University\'s Graduate School of Architecture\, Planning and Preservation’s Urban Design Program\, Orff is responsible for founding and co-directing the GSAPP’s Urban Landscape Lab\, an applied research group focused on the role of design in urban ecosystems. She is also the founding principal of New York-based landscape architecture studio SCAPE\, which focuses on biodiversity\, community-based change and sustainable design. Her lecture is called “Toward an Urban Ecology.”