ABOUT
Designer - Educator
DIANA GUO
Diana Guo is a designer and PhD candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP, working across design, critical theory, and pedagogy. She is also co-founder of OFFICE PINGA. Trained in landscape architecture at Harvard GSD, her work investigates the spatial politics of ecological imaginaries, settler-colonial urbanism, and green development shaped by transpacific capital. Current research examines struggles over land and nature among Indigenous communities, speculative capital, and planning regimes. Rooted in both design practice and critical scholarship, Diana’s approach blends visual analysis, environmental media, and theory to question how landscapes are instrumentalized—materially and ideologically—in the service of power.
Her writing has appeared in Thresholds (MIT Press), LA+ Journal of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Urban Review, GroundUP, Platform 12, Bustler, Canadian Architect, and venues exploring the intersections of environment, aesthetics, and politics. She has taught courses on urban political economy and urban history, and is committed to pedagogies that foreground land, race, and environmental justice. She has practiced internationally in landscape architecture and urban design firms such as Perkins + Will, ASPECT Studios, Mass Design Group, Antao Design, and was curator of Kirkland Gallery from 2022-2023.
Based between NYC and Vancouver, Diana works between disciplines to question what design and planning do—and for whom—while exploring minor, provisional, and decolonial modes of practice. She examines the role—and complicity—of landscape architecture in green spatial exclusion, alongside the visions and values of transpacific investors, local politicians, and First Nations groups. Her work interrogates which green imaginaries are privileged or erased, what forms of collaboration emerge, and how alternative land uses and social movements challenge dominant narratives. She also considers the material and political economies of green space, the politics of landscape, and the possibilities for a more just—and potentially decolonial—landscape architecture.
Diana is passionate about design pedagogy and brings a critical perspective to conversations around landscape, urbanism, and visual representation. She has participated as a guest critic in final reviews including Harvard GSD, Columbia GSAPP, Boston Architectural College, and UBC SALA. Selected by faculty and the department at the GSD, Diana worked as TA for five graduate-level courses, spanning design studios, seminars, and lectures, supporting courses such as Theories and Histories of Landscape Architecture with Pablo Pérez-Ramos (Spring 2022), Thinking Landscapes with Alex Wall (Spring 2022), Visual Representations of Landscape Architecture with Emily Wettstein (Fall 2021), and Urban Assemblages: Landscape Architecture IV with Jill Desimini (J-term 2021). She also served as TA for Idea of Environment with Dr. Abby Spinak in the Department of Urban Planning (Fall 2022). In addition to teaching, she worked with the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative and Climate Justice Design Fellowship.
She holds a MLA and MDes from Harvard GSD with Distinction, where she received the Design Domain Prize and ASLA Award for Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Her work has been supported by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Mellon Initiative, and Penny White Fellowship. She earned her BA in Urban Studies and Fine Art from Vassar College.
Contact for collaborations, commissions, or teaching sample. CV and syllabi upon request.
Email: dg3372@columbia.edu