Rate My Professor Rob Holmes

Rob Holmes serves as Associate Professor and Chair of the Undergraduate Program in Landscape Architecture in Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture, a position he has held since fall 2021 after serving as Assistant Professor there from 2016 to 2021. His academic background includes a Master of Landscape Architecture from Virginia Tech in 2008 and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Covenant College in 2003. Earlier in his career, Holmes was Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Florida from 2014 to 2016. He also held distinguished visiting professorships and adjunct instructor roles at Ohio State University, Louisiana State University, and Virginia Tech. Professionally, he worked as a Project Designer and Associate at Michael Vergason Landscape Architects from 2006 to 2014.

Holmes specializes in research on infrastructure design, urbanization, and landscape change, directing the Landscape Infrastructure Design Lab and leading the Natural Infrastructure Innovation Project funded by $7.75 million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering With Nature program to develop solutions like marsh restoration and barrier islands for Gulf Coast challenges. As co-founder of the Dredge Research Collaborative, a nonprofit advancing sediment system design, he has earned the 2020 Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award from his school at Auburn, the 2019-2020 Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Excellence in Research Award, multiple 2019 American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Awards for Public Sediment for Alameda Creek, and the Dean’s Outstanding Leadership & Mentorship Award. Key publications include “The Problem with Solutions” in Places Journal (2020), “Integrating Engineering With Nature Strategies and Landscape Architecture Techniques into the Sabine to Galveston Coastal Storm Risk Management Project” in Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (2021), and the chapter “Design with change” in Design with Nature Now (2019). He has taught numerous landscape architecture studios, history, theory, and practice courses and delivered invited lectures at universities including City College of New York and the University of Texas at Austin.