Title
Professor of Landscape Architecture, Director of Natural Learning InitiativeEducation
Master of City Planning, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDiploma in Architecture, Bartlett School of Architecture, London University
Biography
Robin Moore holds degrees in architecture, London University, and city and regional planning, MIT (where he studied with pioneer urban design researchers Kevin Lynch and Donald Appleyard). In 1969, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Urban Design, Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley. He taught also at Stanford University. Appointed in 1981 to the faculty of landscape architecture, College of Design, NC State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, he currently supervises doctoral students and offers an advanced interdisciplinary field investigation course, Human Use of the Urban Landscape. In 2011, Moore was named “Professor of the Year” by his Landscape Architecture Department peers.Professor Moore’s interdisciplinary research is focused on the link between human and environmental health and how it can be positively supported by urban landscape design considered as a public health intervention. Moore is internationally recognized as an authority on the ecological design of children’s educational environments, intergenerational outdoor spaces, participatory design programming, and user needs in public open space design. He is an experienced collaborative design process facilitator. As a founding faculty member of the Center for Universal Design, College of Design, he was the principal investigator for the US Access Board to develop Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards for Children’s Environments. Moore is author or co-author of leading texts in the specialized field of intergenerational outdoor design and has been recognized three times by the College of Design for his research contributions.
In 2000, with Dr. Nilda Cosco, Moore founded the Natural Learning Initiative (NLI), a research, training, and design assistance unit, NC State University, College of Design, which has become a leader in the movement to naturalize children’s outdoor areas in neighborhoods, childcare centers, school grounds, children’s museums, zoos, botanical gardens, arboreta, and urban parks. With Dr. Cosco he has worked extensively with North Carolina Partnership for Children (Smart Start) and leaders in public health and recreation. He is a frequent presenter at national and international professional conferences, including the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) and the American Association of Landscape Architects (ASLA). With Jena Ponti, ASLA, Moore co-founded the ASLA Professional Practice Network (PPN) on Children’s Outdoor Environments (2009). Since 2009, NLI has collaborated with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), supported by the US Forest Service to develop national guidelines for the development of nature play and learning areas, as well as a training program to engage children and nature, supported by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. To date, NLI has worked on projects in 27 states in the US.
Using the concepts of behavior setting, affordance, territorial development, and design as a measurable health intervention, NLI’s research continues to focus on understanding how the form and content of the built environment and its design can motivate higher levels of outdoor physical activity, nutritional awareness, and other health benefits among children in the context of family, neighborhood, and childhood institutions. Research conducted by NLI has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Active Living Research), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation of North Carolina. NLI continues to pursue a research interest in early science learning in prepared outdoor settings, with support from the National Science Foundation and the North Carolina Zoo. Moore and Cosco have pioneered development of observational behavior mapping methods for gathering objective data linking environmental attributes and associated behaviors, now offered as research training through NLI.
As a founding principal of MIG, Inc., a design, planning, and communications firm based in Berkeley, CA., Moore has contributed to projects that include the award-winning Hamill Family Play Zoo, Brookfield Zoo, Chicagoland, and the outdoor learning environment, First Environments Child Development Center, Research Triangle Park, NC. His contributions to intergenerational/educational/recreational outdoor design include the Environmental Yard, Washington Elementary School, Berkeley, California (constructed with UC Berkeley students and community volunteers, 1972-1980). The story of this decade-long project became the book, Natural Learning, after which NLI is named. Other notable collaborative projects conducted with practicing professionals include the Edible Schoolyard, Greensboro Children’s Museum, Greensboro, NC (with Swanson Associates and Carla Delcambre, landscape architect, Chapel Hill, NC); Kid’s Together Playground, Marla Dorrell Park, Cary, North Carolina (with Little and Little, Landscape Architects, Raleigh, NC, 2000); the Playspace family play center, downtown Raleigh (with several Triangle Area architects), now part of Marbles Kids Museum, Raleigh; and Playport, Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Professor Moore and Dr. Nilda Cosco have collaborated on several projects with Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates (MVVA) Cambridge, MA, and Brooklyn, NYC, including the award-winning Teardrop Park, Battery Park City, Manhattan; Brooklyn Bridge Park; and the Boston Children’s Museum, Fort Point Channel Promenade, Boston.
Professor Moore’s international scholarly research and service includes 25 years with the international NGO, the International Play Association (IPA), including editorship of the magazine, PlayRights, and International President (1990-1999). He has collaborated over many years with Japanese child development and design organizations. He served as a public participation advisor to an interdisciplinary design team working with an International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) team with the Chilean government on urban park development in underserved areas of Santiago. In the 1990s he worked in Argentina collaborating with architects and landscape architects on participatory ecological design and open space projects. As a member of the 25-member, international, interdisciplinary research team, he co-directed the Argentine segment of the eight-country UNESCO study: Growing Up in Cities, subsequently published as Growing Up in an Urbanising World (2002), winner of the EDRA/Places Research Award.
In 2011, Moore was honored as “Ambassador of Landscape Architecture,” by the Quebecois Association of Landscape Architects, at their annual meeting in Montreal. He continues to be engaged internationally in landscape architecture and related fields on issues of intergenerational landscape design research and policy. He has contributed to professional education programs in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Singapore, United Kingdom, and Venezuela. He was invited as IFLA keynote speaker, Cartagena, Colombia (1991), and was one of 19 North American instructors in the UNESCO-supported, IFLA Western Region, Brazilian Capacity-Building Programme for Landscape Architecture, Säo Paulo (2005). In 2010, he was invited by the Singapore Ministry of Education as Distinguished Speaker to address the annual Kindergarten Conference about the value of outdoor learning environments.
Professor Moore has received many awards for his design/research contributions, including the American Horticultural Society, “Great American Gardeners Landscape Design Award” (2001), and the Environmental Design Research Association, “Outstanding Contribution to the Practice of Design Research Award” (1988). He has authored or co-authored: Childhood’s Domain: Play and Place in Child Development (1986), The Play for All Guidelines (1987), Plants for Play (1993), The Complete Playground Book (1993), Natural Learning (1998), and numerous book chapters and research articles on the value of outdoor environments in child and family development.
