Sara Jensen Carr is an Associate Professor of architecture, urbanism, and landscape at Northeastern University. Her work, teaching, and research examines the connections between urban landscape, architecture, and human health. Her work has been funded by the National Endowment for Humanities, Mellon Foundation, Graham Foundation, and J.M. Kaplan Fund, as well as published in varied outlets including Preventive Medicine, LA+ Journal, Places Journal, and the Journal of Architectural Education. Her book, The Topography of Wellness: How Health and Disease Shaped the American Urban Landscape, was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2021 and was a recipient of the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize as well as awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Boston Society of Landscape Architects, and the Environmental Design Research Association. She is a nationally-recognized scholar on how epidemics have influenced design, and has been interviewed by the the New York Times, The New Republic, the New Yorker, BBC, and NPR, among others.
At Northeastern, Dr. Carr is a co-founder of the Health and Wellness Design Lab at CAMD’s Center for Design, and holds affiliate faculty appointments at the Global Resilience Institute, Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research, and in both the Masters of Urban Planning and Policy and Health, Humanities, and Society programs. She works extensively with nonprofits, local governments, professional landscape associations, and park conservancies both in and outside the classroom on participatory public realm design and community-driven research and is engaged in undergraduate curricular initiatives. She is a registered architect, and prior to coming to Northeastern, she taught at University of California, Berkeley, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Research & Publication Highlights
Carr, S.J.; The Topography of Wellness: Health and American Urban Landscape. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021.
Arnold Mages, M., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Carr, S.J., Kim, M., Mello, S., “Resurrecting Carvings in Stone: Deploying Design Research Methods for Public Health Investigations in the Age of COVID-19,” Design for Health, Vol. 7(2), 2023.
Carr, S.J. “Pollution,” Keywords for Health Humanities, Sari Altschuler, Priscilla Wald, and Jonathan Metzl (eds.), New York: New York University Press, 2023.
Carr, S.J.; “Quarantine, eradication, and prescription: how health segregated the American urban landscape,” in Spatial Inequalities and Segregation in the Urban Landscape. Thaisa Way, (ed.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023.
Carr, S.J., McIntosh, A., Ochsendorf, J., and Murphy, M., “Schools that Breathe: Studio Education in the Pandemic,” Journal of Architectural Education: Health, Spring 2022.
Carr, S.J.; “Ecology to pathology: ‘scientific’ architecture, health, and American public housing landscapes,” In Landscapes of Housing. Jeanne Haffner (ed.), Routledge, 2021.
Carr, S.J., “Water is Wealth: occupation and erasure in Honolulu’s urban landscape and its ecological future,” Places Journal, October 2021.
Carr, S.J.; “Alien Landscapes: NASA, Hawaiʻi, and interplanetary occupation,” The Avery Review, Columbia University Press, December 2020.
Carr, S.J., “Uncertain Space: data illusions and the chorography of chronic disease,” Projections Vol. 15: Practices of Health in Unruly Environments, Journal of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT Press, Fall 2020.
Carr, S.J.; “Corporeal Ecologies,” LA+ Journal: Vitality, University of Pennsylvania Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, February 2020.
Hafoka, S. and Carr, S.J.; “Facilitators and Barriers to Being Physically Active in a Rural Hawaiʻi Community: A Photovoice Perspective,” Asia Pacific Nursing Journal, January 2019.
Departments
Architecture
Education
- PhD, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, University of California, Berkeley
- MLA, University of California, Berkeley
- M. Arch., Tulane University
Awards
- 2024 Award of Excellence in Communications, American Society of Landscape Architects
- 2022 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize, Center for Cultural Landscapes
- 2022 CAMD High Impact Teaching Award
- 2022 Annual Design Awards, Special Jury Recognition, Boston Society of Landscape Architects
- 2017 Dumbarton Oaks Mellon Fellow in Urban Landscape Studies
Courses Taught
- LARC 2130 Sustainable Urban Site Design
- ARCH 5115 Options Studio
- ARCH 5312 Mapping and Building Health
- ARCH 7130 Masters Research Studio
Research Focus
- Landscape
- Urban Design
- Public Health
- Architecture
