Staff Profile

Usue is a chartered landscape architect, researcher and educator. She teaches across design studios, professional practice and design thesis modules, drawing from her innovative research and professional practice experience. Usue's research and scholarship are concerned with advancing Landscape Architecture as a discipline uniquely positioned to address planetary health, biodiversity and climate crises, and social and eco-justice. To that end, she researches in the cross-cutting fields of acoustic ecology, multispecies collaborations and 'research by design', and her publications and creative outputs demonstrate an emerging international leadership in these fields. For example, her acoustic ecology research has expanded design practice as evidenced by her monograph Urban Soundscapes (Routledge, 2024), the Landscape Institute Innovation Award 2020, invited book chapters by leading scholars and invitations to keynote at international academic conferences. Her keen interest in design and art as forms of research informs her role as "Thinking Eye" editor of the peer review Journal of Landscape Architecture JoLA.

Originally from the Basque Country in northern Spain, Usue came to Newcastle 22 years ago to study the Master of Landscape Architecture at Newcastle University.  In her professional practice she has worked as part of multi-disciplinary teams for public and private schemes in the UK and Spain. In her latest appointment as an associate at Oobe, Usue was responsible for carrying out design reviews, embedding research into projects, pushing innovation and creative forms of representation and contributing to marketing.

Affiliations

Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute (CMLI)

Member of the 'Asociacion Espanola de Paisajistas' (Spanish Association of Landscape Architects)

Member of the Landscape Research Group

Editor roles

"Thinking Eye" editor for the peer-reviewed Journal of Landscape Architecture JoLA

Management roles at Newcastle University

Degree Programme Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture (2020-2024)

Degree Programme Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture Studies (2020-2022)

School Management Team member (2021-to date)

School Education Committee member (2023-to date)

External roles

Landscape Institute's Education and Membership Committee member

Validation Panel Member for the MA Landscape Architecture Studies, Arts University Bournemouth

Invited Judge for the Landscape Institute Awards

Previous appointments in Landscape Architecture practice

2014-2020 Associate Landscape Architect at Oobe

2008-2014 Associate Landscape Architect at Colour

2001-2007 Landscape Architect to Associate at Robinson Landscape Design

2000-2001 Landscape Architect at Gateshead Council

Usue's research interests are situated in the interface between research and practice. She is interested in exploring more-than-human conceptualisations and entanglements through experimental arts methods that include soundwalks, photography and temporary installations, and their application in to practice. This threading of research into practice is exemplified by her guide to sound for landscape architects titled 'Thinking with my Ears' that won the Innovation category of the Landscape Institute Awards 2020.

Research interests

• More than human conceptualisations, entanglements and conflicts and their role in current concerns in landscape architecture practice, such as modern society's detachment from nature and our climate emergency.
• Arts methods, including soundwalking, composition, photography and writing.
• Listening and soundmaking for the affective engagement with the landscape and their application into practice - from site analysis through to auralisations, landscape maintenance and monitoring.
• Walking as a mode to connect with and becoming landscape
• Creative practice/Research by Design in Landscape Architecture

PhD supervision

Usue welcomes enquiries from potential PhD students in any of the above areas.

Ongoing PhD by Creative Practice Supervision:

2022-date. Lotte Dijkstra: Intersectional Belonging, Exploring Equitable Access to Urban Forest Qualities Across Communities (with Clive Davies and Maggie Roe)

2021-date. Hazel Barron-Cooper: Digging Deep, Unearthing the Genius Loci (part-time, with Andrew Burton and Sam Turner)

Art Installations

2023 - Old Pottery's Murmurations,, with Dan Hill, part of A Space for Sound - The Arches Sound Project

2019 - Dog Leap Stairs Soundwalk, part of the Walking Festival of Sound

2017 - Silent Landscapes, Barrowburn Farm, Northumberland National Park

2017 - 2019 - Rewilding the Gardiner Expressway, Buro Happold London

2016 - Leslie Street Spit, Audio Postcards Canada exhibition curated by CASE 

2016 - Rewilding the Gardiner Expressway, part of the Scotiabank CONTACT photography festival, Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto

2015 - Staging Nature in the Mundane City, Percy Quad, Newcastle University

Usue follows a partnership approach to teaching, where she considers students as partners in learning. She embeds this approach into her teaching by facilitating inclusive learning environments and interactive activities, and by encouraging, without forcing, student participation in multiple ways.

Postgraduate teaching

Usue is the MLA Stage 2 coordinator and teaches across the programme in design studios, professional practice and design thesis modules.

For academic year 2024-25 Usue is the module leader for:

APL8021 Landscape Architecture Studio 1: Strategies, Forms and Narratives for Contemporary Landscape

APL8012 Landscape Design Thesis

Usue also teaches in the following modules:

APL8011 Landscape Professional Practice, Planning and Law

APL8010 Landscape Architecture Studio 4: Design with Plants and Ecological Landscape Management

Undergraduate teaching

Usue contributes to teaching within BA Architecture and Urban Planning and BA Urban Planning.

• Articles

  • Yigit-Turan B, Hellstrom-Reimer M, Leger-Smith A, Lima F, Ruiz Arana U, Wieser Benedetti U. Landscape architecture criticism in the Anthropocene. Journal of Landscape Architecture 2023, 17(3), 4-5.
  • Leger-Smith A, Wieser Benedetti U, Hellstrom-Reimer M, Keravel S, Lima F, Ruiz Arana U, Yigit-Turan B. Forests in the city, a new paradigm. Journal of Landscape Architecture 2023, 18(1), 4-7.
  • van Hellemondt I, Kampevold Larsen J, Keravel S, Leger-Smith A, Ruiz Arana U, Wieser Benedetti U. Where are we?. Journal of Landscape Architecture 2022, 16(3), 4-5.
  • van Hellemondt I, Kampevold Larsen J, Keravel S, Leger-Smith A, Ruiz Arana U, Wieser Benedetti U. Landscape critique as a necessity. Journal of Landscape Architecture 2022, 16(2), 4-5.
  • van Hellemondt I, Keravel S, Leger-Smith A, Ruiz Arana U, Wieser Benedetti U, Yigit-Turan B. Home ecologies. Journal of Landscape Architecture 2022, 17(2), 4-5.
  • van Hellemondt I, Kampevold Larsen J, Keravel S, Leger-Smith A, Ruiz Arana U, Yigit-Turan B, Wieser Benedetti U. Copy and paste landscapes. Journal of Landscape Architecture 2022, 17(1), 4-5.
  • Ruiz Arana U. The Wild in Silence. Interference 2019, 7.
  • Ruiz Arana U. The Gardiner Expressway birbasatzen. Aldiri, Arkitektura Eta Abar 2017, 29, 7-10.
  • Ruiz Arana U. Thinking with my ears - a reflection on sound and landscape architecture. World Landscape Architecture 2015, 21.
  • Ruiz-Arana U. 'Staging' nature in the mundane city. Kerb 2015, 23, 108-111.

• Authored Book

  • Ruiz Arana, U. Urban Soundscapes: Listening and Sounding in Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. Routledge, 2024. In Press.

• Book Chapter

  • Ruiz Arana U. Soundwalking in the Phonocene: Walking, Listening, Wilding. In: Smolicki J, ed. Soundwalking: Through Time, Space and Technologies. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2023.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)

  • Ruiz Arana, U. Multispecies soundscapes: a more-than-human approach. In: INTER-NOISE24. 2024. Submitted.
  • Ruiz Arana U. Thinking with my ears - Guidance on Sound for Landscape Architects. In: Internoise - The 48th International Congress and Exhibition on Noise Control Engineering. 2019, Madrid: i-ince.

• Digital or Visual Media

  • Ruiz Arana U. Listening to Landscapes with Usue Ruiz Arana. The Rest is Just Noise, 2023.

• Editorials

  • Hellström-Reimer M, Ruiz Arana U, Keravel S, Leger-Smith A, Lima F, Wieser Benedetti U, Yiğit-Turan B. Elemental landscapes. Journal of Landscape Architecture 2023, 18(2-3), 4-5.
  • Gill K, van Hellemondt I, Keravel S, Leger-Smith A, Rinaldi BM, Ruiz Arana U, Kampevold Larsen J, Wieser Benedetti U. Beyond mere illustration. Journal of Landscape Architecture 2021, 16(1), 4-7.

• Report

  • Metcalf O, Abrahams C, Ashington B, Baker Ed, Bradfer-Lawrence T, Browning E, Carruthers-Jones J, Darby J, Dick J, Eldridge A, Elliott DR, Heath B, Howden-Leach P, Johnston A, Lees AC, Meyer CFJ, Ruiz Arana U, Smyth S. Good practice guidelines for long-term ecoacoustic monitoring in the UK : with a particular focus on terrestrial biodiversity at the human-audible frequency range. UK Acoustics Network, 2023.