Ryan Moody

Ryan knew he wanted to be an architect before he even knew what the role entailed. Influenced by his grandmother’s admiration for Frank Lloyd Wright and his father’s work as a developer in Chicago, he pursued a childhood ambition with clarity and purpose.

He earned his degree in architecture from the University of Illinois and began his career working for the grandson of Mies van der Rohe in Chicago. Collaborating with notable architects Jim Goettsch and Steve Nilles, he contributed to shaping the city’s skyline through the design of two high-rise towers in the Chicago Loop.

His journey took a new turn at the University of Virginia, where he pursued a graduate degree in architecture and unexpectedly fell under the spell of landscape architecture. Inspired by the language of plants, theory courses taught by Elizabeth Meyer, and Cole Burrel's plant expertise, Ryan expanded his academic path to earn dual master’s degrees in architecture and landscape architecture.

He went on to work with Jim van Sweden and Wolfgang Oehme in Washington, D.C., where he further developed his knowledge of the “New American Garden” style, characterized by bold masses of grasses and perennials. His work spanned projects at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall, and residential landscapes in New York and Virginia, where he explored the balance of ecological function and visual expression.

Today, Ryan’s work continues to draw on a foundation of architecture, landscape theory, and design. He is influenced by distant travels, neighborhood gardens, accidental harmonies, and the pursuit of health through meaningful connections between people, plants, and place.

EDUCATION

• University of Virginia School of Architecture, 2007
  Master of Landscape Architecture
• University of Virginia School of Architecture, 2007
  Master of Architecture
• University of Illinois, 2001
  Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies
• Ecole d'Architecture de Versailles academic year of study, 1999

HONORS

• Student ASLA Honor Award in Communications
• Stanley and Helen Abott Award - UVA School of Architecture
• Certificate of Public Service - UVA School of Architecture
• Imagining Penn Center Competition 1st honorable mention
• Chicago Prize International Competition finalist
• Louise Woodroofe Prize - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Architecture
• Charles Clemens Councell Memorial Architecture Award

PROFESSIONAL REGISTRATION

• District of Columbia Landscape Architect
• Maryland Landscape Architect 
• Virginia Landscape Architect
  

PUBLICATIONS

• Co-founder, editor and essayist for lunch volume 1: trespass
  Essay- Heliocentricity
  
• Editor and essayist for lunch volume 2: dialect
  Essay- Home and Horizon in the Work of Jens Jensen
  

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