Professor Emerita
Landscape Architecture
Lolly Tai, PhD, RLA, FASLA
- Email: lollytai@temple.edu
- Website: https://sites.temple.edu/lollytai/
Lolly Tai is a licensed landscape architect whose work is focused on sustainable landscape design. Tai’s experience includes a wide range of landscape architectural design projects of varying scope and scales. She incorporates innovative technologies of best management practices, green infrastructure and forward-looking strategies into her classroom projects. Tai’s courses include design studios, research design methods, computer graphics, materials and methods of construction and site engineering.
Tai’s research emphasis is on designing spaces that afford children the opportunity to engage in creative and active play, which is crucial to children’s mental, moral, emotional and physical development. She is the author of the books, Letting Play Bloom: Designing Nature-Based Risky Play for Children (Temple University Press, 2022),The Magic of Children’s Gardens: Inspiring Through Creative Design (Temple University Press, 2017), Designing Outdoor Environments for Children (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and La Progettazione Degli Spazi All’aperto Per i Bambini (Sistemi Editorial, 2009). She has written articles on computer technology, landscape architecture education, service learning, design build, and outdoor environments for children, which have been published in Landscape Architecture Magazine, Landscape Journal, Landscape Review and other journals.
In 2021, Tai received the Jot D. Carpenter Teaching Medal from the American Society of Landscape Architects, a national honor recognizing significant contributions to landscape architecture education.
PhD, Landscape Architecture, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh College of Art, 2001
MLArch, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 1979
BS, Landscape Architecture, Cornell University, 1977
Selected Work
Tai, L. (2022) Letting Play Bloom: Designing Nature-Based Risky Play for Children. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Tai, L. (2017). The Magic of Children’s Gardens: Inspiring through Creative Design.
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Tai, L., & Kuper, R. (2010). Mastering Landscape Architecture. Landscape Architecture, 100(3),
64-77.
Tai, L., Haque, M., Knight, E. J., & McClellan, G. (2006). Designing Outdoor Environments for
Children: Landscaping Schoolyards, Gardens and Playgrounds. New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill Education.
Tai, L. (2003). Doctoring the Profession. Landscape Architecture, 93(11), 64-73.
Tai, L. (2003). Assessing the Impact of Computer Use on Landscape Architecture Professional
Practice: Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Design Creativity. Landscape Journal, 22(2),
113-125.