Taisuke Wakabayashi

Tai is a Ph.D. student in Landscape Architecture (History & Theory) with a background in Architecture and English. His research interrogates 'design thinking' in the emergence of nuclear landscapes, including sites of military experimentation, infrastructure development, atomic disaster, and radioactive waste disposal. Drawing from New Materialism, he examines nuclear landscapes as co-produced and negotiated spaces, exploring the interplay between humans and the substantive agencies of nuclear technology. 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 emergent technological complexities. Tai is a recipient of the Doctoral Degree Acquisition Fellowship (2024-2027) from the Japanese Student Service Organization of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. He has also received the Nicholson Fellowship (2024) for a certification in Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, along with other research grants including the Pauline Tilton Kennedy Prize (2023) and Edward L. Ryerson Travelling Award (2022). He has worked as a teaching assistant for theory and history courses in both Architecture and Landscape Architecture.