Interview: Lydia Major, landscape architecture and planning studio leader, LHB

Landscape architect Lydia Major recently received a career achievement award from the Minnesota Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Major is LHB’s landscape architecture and planning studio leader, where she oversees a team of mainly women in the firm’s Minneapolis and Duluth offices. Her leadership and mentorship of this team — which is unique in the industry — helped Major attain the award, she says. Major began at LHB in 2007, after a former co-worker asked her to join the Minneapolis-based firm. She started her career at Westwood Professional Services after graduating with a master of landscape architecture from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor of arts in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I sometimes feel like I use my English major more just in daily communication and how we kind of describe [design] to people,” she says. Her work has spanned public, residential and commercial spaces, including the Promenade of Wayzata, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District Comprehensive Master Plan Document and the Central Riverfront Regional Park Master Plan. In this episode, Major speaks with Reporter Kelly Busche about her career, and how over the past year, she has seen the public’s expectations for public spaces like sidewalks, streets and parks, change due to the pandemic and social justice transformation.