Keenan Gibbons, ASLA, PLA

Keenan Gibbons is Climate & Biodiversity Action Fellow at the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) (2026-2027); Principal and Director of Landscape Architecture at SmithGroup; and a Lecturer at the University of Michigan. 

Gibbons is an internationally recognized expert on how landscape architecture can reduce the impacts of extreme heat.  Gibbons’ research has been featured in CNN, PBS Newshour, The Weather Channel, and NPR. 

Gibbons began studying urban heat islands with drone technology a decade ago. In 2023, he and Salvador Lindquist, assistant professor of landscape architecture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, were co-lead investigators of the research study Heat Waves: Visualizing Thermal Disparities, which received a Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Research Grant in Honor of Deb Mitchell. Their 18-month-long research project resulted in Thermal Toolkit: Technologies and Techniques for Visualizing Heat, which offers a range of heat visualization methods and case studies of their use.