Ilse Frank, PLA, ASLA, Assoc. AIA, has fifteen years of experience working and teaching in landscape architecture, urban design, architecture, and planning. Falling in love with cities while traveling in the UTSOA’s Study In Italy and Europe Program as an undergraduate student at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, combined with a formative Professional Residency Program experience at West 8 in Rotterdam led her to pursue two master degrees. While a graduate student at PennDesign, Ilse and three of her classmates won the first prize in the Andrés Bello Foundation’s Plaza Zona Rental International Ideas Competition, Caracas, Venezuela. Much of Ilse’s coursework at Penn focused on Florida, the Everglades, and issues at the intersection of the environment and growth management. This lead her to become a research assistant to Dr. Susan Wachter at Wharton with SILUS, the Science Impact Laboratory for Urban Systems focusing on research regarding housing demand in and around Miami, Florida.

In 2010, Ilse Frank co-founded Studio Balcones Landscape Architecture & Urbanism. In practice, Ilse views projects through the lens of an architect and a landscape architect, and pays particular attention to city and regional planning. Ilse designs with a consideration for the long term and far reaching impacts beyond a site’s boundary. At a finer scale, she approaches public space and parks in tandem with buildings— addressing relationships of scale, materials, and inside/outside connections.