Elissa Rosenberg is a landscape architect and associate professor in the Graduate Program in Urban Design, and also an associate professor (emerita) at the University of Virginia, where she taught from 1989 – 2007 and served as Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department. Since relocating to Israel, she has taught at the Technion and Tel Aviv University.  Her teaching and research focus on landscape as a cultural practice and a model for contemporary urbanism, tying together the separate discourses of urbanism, ecology and landscape design. She teaches studios and courses on urban landscapes and post-industrial landscapes in the undergraduate and graduate programs. Her research lies at the intersection of contemporary landscape architecture and urban design with a focus on cultural landscapes, post-industrial landscapes, green infrastructure and mobility. Her recent publications have focused on Israeli landscapes, include Tel Aviv’s seaside urbanism, and the kibbutz as a laboratory for Israeli landscape modernism.

Prof. Els Verbakel is a founding partner of Derman Verbakel Architecture and Head of the School of Architecture at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem. She was a faculty member at the Technion in Haifa, Columbia University, NYC, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and Princeton University, New Jersey. Els has earned her PhD in Architecture from Princeton University, a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University, and a Graduate Degree in Civil Engineering and Architecture from the University of Leuven, Belgium. She served as the editor of two books: “In Search of the Public. Notes on the Contemporary American City” and “Constellations: Constructing Urban Design Practices” as well as the Architectural Design (AD) Magazine on the theme “Cities of Dispersal.”