The architect who’s confronting climate change

By Alissa Walker

Growing up on a 100-acre farm in rural Missouri, Pamela Conrad spent virtually all of her childhood outdoors. Wading through swollen creeks in springtime and helping her father bale hay during harvest, she developed an early awareness of the often precarious relationship between humans and the powerful natural world.

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An internship for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took Conrad to Los Angeles, where she earned a landscape architecture degree at nearby Cal Poly Pomona and collaborated closely with biologists to restore ecosystems ravaged by LA’s rapid urbanization. After working in Portland, Oregon, and Shanghai, Conrad landed at CMG Landscape Architecture in San Francisco, where she joined a project that kickstarted bigger regional conversations about water and resiliency: a plan to redevelop Treasure Island, a former military property situated just adjacent to the Bay Bridge.

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Treasure Island and neighboring Yerba Buena Island were both overgrown with eucalyptus trees, an invasive species that introduces significant fire risk. The first task was felling the non-native giants and processing the wood into benches and stair treads for use throughout the island. But Conrad went even further to protect the island’s habitat, says Pancoast, setting up a native plant nursery that could help them gather seeds and propagate plants primarily sourced from the islands themselves. “Her success is not only in coming up with the ideas but also coming up with a solution for them on a technological level,” Pancoast says.

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Not only do the city’s most iconic locations pose some of the greatest known danger to local residents, but protecting them also might require significant—and potentially unpopular—changes. As part of the project’s outreach, Conrad’s team created a community mapping activity dubbed “game of hazards” that delivered this information in a playful, accessible way to the city’s app-savvy audience. The public was invited to plot favorite spots along the waterfront, and, when they did so, would also see the potential dangers the locations faced due to rising waters or seismic activity.

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