Richard Hindle

Patents, innovation, environment.

Richard Hindle is a designer, innovator, and educator. He teaches courses in ecological technology, planting design, and a range of topical studios that explore the diverse landscapes of California. Hindle's research focuses on technology in the urban and regional landscape with an emphasis on innovation and the design of living systems. His current research reframes landscape architecture as a technological field through detailed analysis of prior-art and contemporary policy, linking the profession to broader sociotechnical processes.

A recurring theme in Hindle’s work is the tandem history, and future, of technology, city, and landscape. His writing, and teaching, explores the potential of new technological narratives and the material imagination to reframe theory, practice, and the invention of systems that grow, and adapt, such as those that integrate plants, natural processes, and non-human species into constructed environments. He is a published author with articles appearing in the Journal of the Patent Office Society (JPTOS), Technology Architecture & Design (TAD), Journal of Landscape Architecture (JOLA), Journal of Architectural Education (JAE), Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM), The Plan Journal, UC Berkeley’s Ground-Up Journal, and Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. In 2012 he received a Graham Foundation Award for the reconstruction of the “Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and Systems” and continues to explore the technological origins of other emergent technologies. Hindle has worked as a consultant and designer, specializing in the design of advanced horticultural and building systems, from green roofs and facades to large-scale urban landscapes. View recent work with Tom Leader Studio as part of the Common Ground Team in the Resilient By Design Bay Area Challenge.

LDARCH 111 – Plants in Design: From Natural Precedents to Urban Systems

LDARCH 202 – Design for California Landscapes 

LD ARCH 226 – LAEP Innovation Seminar

Graham Foundation Grant for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts

ACSA, Architectural Education Award, 2019

JAE Best Article, Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River

Hindle, Richard. Knowledge Infrastructure for Coastal Infrastructure: The Y02A Patent Initiative and Site-Based Climate Adaption Strategies. The Plan Journal. Volume 10/2025 - Issue 1

Hindle, Richard L. YO2 As Climate Praxis. Technology, Architecture, Design (TAD) Journal. Climate 8:1 54-65. May 2024

Hindle, Richard L. “Technical Lands: A patent perspective.” In Nesbit, Jeffrey. Waldheim, Charles. Technical Lands: A critical primer. Jovis Publishers 2022

Hindle, Richard L. “Translations Between Patent Innovation and Environmental Design.” In Busserie, Simon. Conceptual Landscapes: new perspectives in the earliest stages of design. Routledge 2023

Hindle, Richard L. 'Vertical Planting: tectonics and aesthetics.' The Aesthetics of Planting Design. Edited by Marc Treib (ORO 2021)

Hindle, Richard L. ‘The Hard Habitats of Coastal Armoring’ In: Mossop, Elizabeth. Sustainable Coastal Planning and Design. Taylor & Francis CRC Press 2019

Hindle, Richard L. ‘Infrastructures of Innovation’ In: Beeck, Sonja, and Meredith Baber. Scaling Infrastructure. MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism: Series on Infrastructure. Publisher Princeton Architectural Press 2016

Hindle, Richard L. Inventing Venice: and urban and environmental innovation model from the lagoon city. Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society. Centennial Volume 100.3 (2018): 530-546

Hindle, Richard L. Bhatia, Neeraj. Territory and Technology: A case study and strategy from the California Delta. The Plan Journal 2:2 (2017): 243-27

Hindle, Richard L. Prototyping the Mississippi Delta: Patents, alternative futures, and the design of complex environmental systems. Journal of Landscape Architecture 12.2 (2017): 32-47

Hindle, Richard L. Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River. Journal of Architectural Education 71:2 (2017): 278-284

Hindle, Richard L. A Legacy of Swamplands. Boom California. (September 2017)

Hindle, Richard L. Patent and Place: Intellectual Property and Site Specificity. Forty-Five Journal of Outside Research.(March 2016)

Hindle, Richard L. Stanley Hart White and the question of ‘What is Modern? Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes 33.3 (2013): 170-177

Hindle, Richard L. A vertical garden: origins of the Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System (1938). Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly, 32:2, 99-110. (2012)

Hindle, Richard L. The Geographical Dimensions of Patent innovation: History, precedents, and experimental pedagogy in an expanded field of landscape technology. BTES – Building Technology Educators Society (BTES Proceedings 2019)

Hindle, Richard L. The Agency of Patent Innovation A.R.P.A. Journal – Conflicts of Interest. (June 2018)

Hindle, Richard L. Levees that Might Have Been. Places Journal. (May 2015)

Hindle, Richard L. Public Domains: material fiefdoms, entropy, and the built environment. Ground-Up Journal, UC Berkeley. (May 2013)

Hindle, Richard L. Invited Book Review: “A landscape Inventory: Michel Desvigne Paysagiste’ Editor Dorothee Imbert." Landscape Architecture Magazine. (July 2019)

Hindle, Richard L. Invited Article. ‘Inventing Rivers and Coasts’ Technosphere Magazine: Dossier: Land & Sea. Published by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, Germany. (Spring 2017)

Hindle, Richard. Invited Article. ‘Inventing Landscapes’ Landscape Architecture Magazine (August 2013)

Common Ground Team - Resilience by Design Bay Area Challenge. – Grand Bayway Design Roadmap