We use cookies to improve and understand visitor’s experiences. By continuing to use this website, you consent to Sam Fox School’s usage of cookies.

Support Apply
Research • Faculty

Seth Denizen

Seth Denizen is a researcher and design practitioner trained in landscape architecture, evolutionary biology, and human geography. His work is multidisciplinary, addressing design, soil science, urban geography, art, and agriculture. He holds a doctorate in geography from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied the political ecology of soil in the Mexican Altiplano. In 2019 he was a recipient of the SOM Foundation Research Prize and has previously taught at Harvard, Berkeley, the University of Hong Kong, and Princeton, where he was a Princeton-Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. In 2025 he exhibited work at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. In 2026 he was awarded the J.B. Jackson Book Prize with Montserrat Bonvehi for: “Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley” (Harvard Design Press, 2025). He is a strategic advisor for the Wright-Ingraham Institute, a board member of SCAPEGOAT Journal, and an assistant professor at the Sam Fox School at WashU.

Headshot of Seth Denizen
Seth Denizen
Assistant Professor
Academic programs
Master of Landscape Architecture
Master of Architecture
Bachelor of Science in Architecture
Bachelor of Arts in Architecture
Email
sethdenizen@wustl.edu
Office
Givens 210

Select Articles, Chapters, and Publications

To think through soil is to engage with some of the most critical issues of our time. In addition to its agricultural role in feeding eight billion people, soil has become the primary agent of carbon storage in global climate models, and it is crucial for biodiversity, flood control, and freshwater resources. Perhaps no other material is asked to do so much for the human environment, and yet our basic conceptual model of what soil is and how it works remains surprisingly vague.

Select Exhibitions and Presentations

  • “Keynote Lecture: Soil, Dirt, and Design,” Seth Denizen; presented at SubTerrarium Conference, 2024, Aarhus, Denmark.

  • “The Right to Sewage,” Seth Denizen; presented at Metabolism of Cities: 8th Annual Urban Soils Symposium, 2023, New York.

  • “Wastewater Urbanism” Seth Denizen; presented at SUITMA 12 (Soils of Urban, Industrial, Traffic, Military and Mining Areas Conference, Working Group of the IUSS, International Union of Soil Sciences, 2023, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Select Awards and Grants

  • 2025 — $20,000 Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity Seed Grant

  • 2025 — Official Selection, Venice Biennale of Architecture

  • 2024 — FAD Awards for Architecture and Interior Design finalist

  • 2019 — SOM Foundation Research Prize

News