Meet the Team
Who is Depave Chicago
Mary Pat McGuire, PLA, ASLA
Founder, Professional Landscape Architect, Associate Professor, University of Illinois
Mary Pat founded Depave Chicago following years of collaborative design research carried out through The Water Lab on stormwater infrastructure, geological history, urban landscape studies, and community engagement in Chicago. That work was started while teaching at Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago) between 2011-2014 and draws upon previous practice for Peter Walker and Partners (Berkeley, CA) on public space design and Conservation Design Forum (Chicago, IL) on Chicago city-wide stormwater studies for industrial land and city streets. Her students won the first round of US-EPA’s Campus Rainworks Challenge, a national competition of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) designs in 2013 and in 2019 an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for Calumet City GSI design research funded by IL/IN Sea Grant. Research and resources from the Chicago-Calumet Region study was extended into an Illinois State-wide web resource Illinois Groundwork.
Mary Pat is a member of the Greater Chicago Watershed Alliance, served on the Technical Advisory Team for the Natural Solutions Toolkit led by the Trust for Public Land, and has been a contributing member of the Calumet Stormwater Collaborative since 2014. She is co-editor of Fresh Water: Design Research for Inland Water Territories (AR+D, 2019), and has published peer-review research through academic venues and public media outlets such as The Plan Journal, Journal of Landscape Architecture, Landscape Journal, Environmental Research Infrastructure and Sustainability, LAF’s CSI Landscape Performance Series, NPR, Architects Newspaper, Streetsblog USA, Grist, Environmental Health News, and Next City. This work has been made possible by funding support through Wright Ingraham Institute, IL/IN Sea Grant (NOAA), US-EPA, Landscape Architecture Foundation, IL Extension Collaboration Grant, UIUC Campus Research Board, among others, and through the incredible collaborations of her students and partners. Start-up funding for Depave Chicago was awarded to her by the Walder Foundation Resilence x Nature program.
Sarah Hanson, MLA
Program Coordinator
Sarah Hanson is the Program Coordinator for Depave Chicago, supporting the program’s partnerships, communications, and research and helping move projects from development toward implementation. Her work draws on her experience in landscape architecture, design research, artistic practice, and creative project management. She brings particular strengths in researching and managing innovative urban design projects, coordinating teams and collaborators, and creatively responding to the unique challenges and opportunities involved in building a practice of depaving.
Sarah received her Master of Landscape Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where she later taught as adjunct faculty. She has worked with Chicago-area landscape architecture practices on the design and research of commercial landscapes and environmental restoration projects. As both a graduate student and faculty member, Sarah participated in the Landscape Architecture Foundation Case Study Investigation program, researching multiple Chicago-area landscapes and using quantitative methods to evaluate landscape performance.
Sarah also holds an undergraduate degree in fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her creative practice brings together her interests in landscape, plants, and textiles through the natural dyeing of fibers. She has taught workshops and retreats on dyeing with indigo, cochineal, madder, and locally found plants including goldenrod, chamomile, and invasive buckthorn. Across her design, research, and artistic practices, Sarah brings curiosity, resourcefulness, and a love of creative problem-solving—qualities particularly well suited to the challenges of depaving cities!