Frontier Fellowship: Sophie Macguire

Sophie Maguire (Vancouver, BC)

Originally from New York and having spent much of her life in the American northeast Sophie Maguire now resides in Vancouver, BC. A choreographer and landscape designer working at the intersection of drawing, history, and performance Sophie is currently a project designer at PFS Studio, an adjunct professor at UBC School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture and a choreographer/ maker.

Her research spans an array of topics including the informal design of adventure playground in the UK, India’s stepwells, landscape architecture’s role in non-urban geographies, differences in interpretation of ‘giving back’ between indigenous and non-indigenous societies, and the marginalization of teenagers in public space. Sophie’s writing has been published in Landscapes|Paysages, Testing Ground Journal, SAD Magazine and Harvard’s publication Kuala Lumpur: Designing the Public Realm. In addition, her performance
work has been shown throughout the northeast of the United States and in British Columbia at venues including The Dance Centre, The Shooting Gallery, The Asheville Fringe Festival, Westbeth Artists House, Triskelion Arts, Gowanus Art + Production, the Current Sessions/ Wild Project and inSitu Dance Festival.

Sophie holds a masters degree in landscape architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2017) and a Bachelors of Art in dance and political science from Connecticut College (2010).

What about Green River & the Frontier Fellowship excites you most?

I was beyond excited to learn of Epicenter and the incredible work being done in Green River. The opportunity to learn from designers who live and practice rurally is especially intriguing to me; as well as the chance to get to know the community within which I will be working (a practice fading from landscape practice). The local knowledge amassed by rural communities concerning their surrounding environment is especially unique and one I am particularly excited to engage with. I can’t wait to learn more about the desert and what it means to be a human living in such a landscape.