Aja Bulla-zamastil: Creative Director
Project Manager, Program Manager, Landscape Architect, Site Assessor, Lead Instructor, Training & Community Coordinator
Aja Bulla-Zamastil is a landscape and architectural designer, she works at the intersection between vast social, ecological and conceptual systems and everyday experience. Her projects question the mindset behind existing cultural landscapes and propose intensifying ecological and social narratives that reveal invaluable knowledge already inherent in the places we inhabit.
Aja has taught graduate landscape architecture and architecture studios at USC and Woodbury University and worked for architecture, landscape and urban design firms in Berlin Germany , Oakland CA, Sonoma CA, Charlottesville VA, and Los Angeles CA. Aja’s ongoing research continues to explore how we can re-imagine and redesign water infrastructure, transforming monofunctional systems into resilient socio-ecological cycles that engage and expand everyday experience, promote alternative cultural practices, and uncover latent ecological processes.
M.S. Architecture, Arid Lands Institute at Woodbury University
M.L.A., University of Virginia, School of Design
M.Arch, University of Virginia, School of Design
B.A., Architecture, University of California at Berkeley
On Staff Since: February 2017 Email: aja@h2oprogressive.com
In Their Own Words: Why My Work Matters
In these challenging times we need regenerative design research, programs, & demonstration projects that perform across scales, catalyzing a paradigm shift that reimagines our relationship with natural & constructed water cycles.
My Passions:
Catalyzing landscape agency and alternative cultural practices to adapt cities to climate change
My Background:
Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Drylands Design
Why I Think Water Is Cool
Water permeates all living processes and ties our individual bodies, homes & communities to vast natural, agricultural, & constructed systems.
What Gives Me Hope
Flowers growing in cracks in the sidewalk
How I Regenerate:
As a kid my favorite pastimes were to play in creeks or go to the beach with my family and fold forward and stare at the ocean upside down through my legs. Hiking along creeks and staring out at the open ocean are still the best ways I find to regenerate.