M.S. Architecture, Arid Lands Institute at Woodbury University M.L.A., University of Virginia, School of Design M.Arch, University of Virginia, School of Design B.A., Architecture, University of California at Berkeley

Design focus: catalyzing landscape agency and alternative cultural practices to adapt cities to climate change

Aja Bulla-Richards is an architectural and landscape architectural designer, public artist, educator and watershed planner. She works at the intersection between vast social, ecological and conceptual systems and everyday experience. Her projects question the mindset behind existing cultural landscapes and propose intensifying the agency of landscape systems and alternative cultural narratives that reveal invaluable knowledge already inherent in the places we inhabit.

As the Creative Director at Watershed Progressive Aja is responsible for managing, designing and coordinating multiple integrated resilient landscape design demonstration projects throughout California. Aja leads the design team at W.P., a consulting and design-build collaborative, focused on bringing appropriate water, land and fire design practices to communities through a regenerative, whole systems approach. WP integrates tools like greywater re-use, regenerative grazing, shaded fire buffers, rainwater harvesting, and stormwater management with an understanding of both ecological patterns and client needs. Each project achieves many benefits including water conservation, habitat restoration, hazard mitigation, fire resilience, community water security, and watershed and community health.

Aja has worked for architecture, landscape and urban design firms in Berlin Germany , Oakland CA, Sonoma CA, Charlottesville VA, and Los Angeles CA. Aja’s ongoing research questions dominant cultural narratives, and explores multiple forms of knowledge formation and co-creation. Her projects explore how we can re-imagine and transform monofunctional systems into resilient socio-ecological cycles that engage and re-enchant everyday experience, promote alternative cultural practices, and uncover latent ecological processes.