Ignacio Bunster-Ossa

Ignacio F. Bunster-Ossa is a landscape architect and urban designer with long-standing national and international experience in the design of sustainable urban places. A recipient of numerous awards, Ignacio’s work is noted for the design integration of green infrastructure, community, and public art.

Significant projects include the Georgetown Waterfront Park in Washington, D.C., the SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus and Hoover-Mason Trestle in Bethlehem, PA, the Trinity River Corridor in Dallas, TX, the Santa Monica Beach Improvement Group, Santa Monica, CA, the Parklands of Floyds Fork in Louisville, KY, and the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative in Washington, D.C.

Internationally, Ignacio led the master plan for Serena del Mar, a ten-thousand inhabitant new community in Cartagena, Colombia, the landscape design of El Parque new community in Santiago, Chile, and the open space component of the Planes estratégicos para las áreas metropolitanas de Panamá y Colón, in the Republic of Panama. He has also participated in projects in China and several ASEAN countries.

Ignacio is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Board Member Emeritus of the Landscape Architecture Foundation, Advisory Board Member of the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania, member of the Leadership Council of the College of Design at the North Carolina State University, and member of the Design Advisory Board of Nature Sacred, a non-profit organization promoting nature in disadvantaged urban areas.

Ignacio is co-author of Green Infrastructure: a Landscape Approach (PAS Report 571, Planners Press, 2013), author of Reconsidering Ian McHarg: the Future of Urban Ecology (Planners Press, 2014), contributor to Design with Nature Now (Lincoln Institute of Land Use Policy, 2019), author Of Limbs, Leaves, and Hope: A Portrait of Philadelphia’s Urban Forest in Times of a Pandemic (ORO Editions, 2022), and author of ALFIE: Earth’s Last Hope, an eco-science fiction novel, https://ignaciobunster-ossa.com/ (Inspiration Pointe Press, 2022). He is currently collaborating with University of Pennsylvania faculty on a photography-based portrait of the University of Pennsylvania campus landscape, scheduled for publication in 2025.

Ignacio holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami (FL), a Master of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Loeb Fellowship in Environmental Studies from Harvard University.