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People  •  Architecture  •  Associate Professor

Sara Jensen Carr

Sara Jensen Carr, PhD, ASLA is an Associate Professor of Architecture, Urbanism, and Landscape at the School of Architecture at Northeastern University, where she holds affiliate appointments at the Global Resilience Institute and Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research. She is a nationally-recognized scholar and practitioner working at the intersection of health, built environment, and the climate crisis. Her book, The Topography of Wellness, was the recipient of multiple awards and received national coverage in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Curbed, and The New Republic, among others. She has also published in a number of outlets including Preventive Medicine, LA+ Journal, Journal of Architectural Education, Places Journal, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. At Northeastern, she leads undergraduate curricular initiatives at the School of Architecture as well as engages with nonprofits, practitioners, and community-based organizations to address complex socio-environmental problems.

Dr. Carr is a licensed architect and holds an M. Arch. from Tulane University and an MLA and PhD from University of California Berkeley. She is a former Mellon Fellow in Urban Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, and has been awarded grants from the Graham Foundation, the NEH, and the J.M. Kaplan Fund. She also previously held teaching appointments at University of Hawaiʻʻ i at Mānoa, University of California Berkeley, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Departments

Architecture

Education

    • (M. Arch.) Tulane University

(MLA) Environmental Planning from the University of California Berkeley
(PhD) Environmental Planning from the University of California Berkeley

Awards

Winner, John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize (2022)
Special Jury Recognition, Boston Society of Landscape Architects (BSLA) Design Awards (2022)
Honorable Mention, Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) Places Book Award (2023)
Northeastern University College of Arts, Media, and Design High Impact Teaching Award (2023)
Oregon | Places Journal Prize (2021)

Research & Publication Highlights

Book
Carr, S.J.; The Topography of Wellness: Health and American Urban Landscape. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021.

Selected Articles

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.

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., “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.

Book Chapters and Entries

Carr, S.J. “Reconsider the Street,” The Pandemic Effect: Ninety Experts on Immunizing the Built Environment, Blaine Brownell, ed., New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 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.; “Ecology to pathology: ‘scientific’ architecture, health, and American public housing landscapes,” In Landscapes of Housing. Jeanne Haffner (ed.), Routledge, 2021.

Courses Taught

  • LARC 5110
  • SUEN 7130