Contact Information
608 S. Wright St. Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Taisuke is a Ph.D. Candidate in Landscape Architecture (History & Theory) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research explores the role of modern and contemporary design thinking in the emergence of nuclear landscapes. Drawing on New Materialism, he examines these landscapes as sites of co-production between humans and nuclear technology, shaped by military experiments, infrastructural projects, atomic disasters, and radioactive waste disposal. His doctoral thesis delineates four forms of nuclear landscapes in Japan and the U.S., theorizing how we have been, are, and will be forming relationships with nuclear matters, material agencies, and technological complexities.
Research Interests
Nuclear Landscape, Technics, Theories of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, New Materialism, & Environmental Humanities
Education
| Ph.D. Landscape Architecture (2022-present) |
| M.ARCH, School of Architecture (2022) |
| B.A. English (2017) |
Grants
| Doctoral Degree Acquisition National Fellowship, Japanese Student Service Organization (JASSO), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (2024-2027) |
| Nicholson Fellowship, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, UIUC (2024) |
| Pauline Tilton Kennedy Prize, Dept. of Landscape Architecture, UIUC (2023) |
| Vincent Bellafiore Fellowship, Dept. of Landscape Architecture, UIUC (2022) |
| University Fellowship, Dept. of Landscape Architecture, UIUC (2022) |
| Baden-Württemberg-Stipendium, Baden-Württemberg Foundation, Germany (2022) |
| Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship in Architecture, School of Architecture, UIUC (2022) |
Courses Taught
| ARCH 577: Theories of Architecture, School of Architecture, UIUC (2024 Fall; 2023 Fall) |
| LA 314: History of World Landscapes, Department of Landscape Architecture, UIUC (2024 Spring) |
| ARCH 517: Modern Architectural History 1850-Present, School of Architecture, UIUC (2023 Spring) |
Recent Publications
| Wakabayashi, Taisuke L. & Roy, William. (2026 forthcoming). Nuclear Memory Entombed: The Architecture of Cocooning at the Hanford Site, Dimensions: Journal of Architectural Knowledge. |
| Wakabayashi Taisuke L. (2024). Landscape Entrusted: Depositing Nuclear Waste in Geologic Time. On_Culture. https://doi.org/10.22029/oc.2024.1436. |
| Wakabayashi, Taisuke L. (2022). Material(ity) Turn, Didactic Readings of Five Texts, Kritik, a response to Zsuzsa Gille (Sociology, UIUC), in Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series Fall 2022, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, UIUC |
| Wakabayashi, Taisuke L. (2021). Biopolitics: Foucault, Esposito, and Agamben, Kritik, a response to Samantha Frost (Political Science, UIUC), in Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series Fall 2021, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, UIUC |