Dr. Ernest Haines

Biography

Ernest Haines is a landscape urban designer whose work examines how computational tools can support adaptive, responsive, and precise approaches to spatial design. He is the founder of ijk Solutions, a Philadelphia-based practice that integrates technology, analysis, modeling, planning, and execution in the built environment. His professional experience ranges from designing high-impact public spaces to constructing large-scale landscape infrastructure both in North America and abroad. Ernest has worked with well-known firms such as Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Sherwood Design Engineers, and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol. His approach centers on projects that are built from a shared language, embedded early in the design process. He holds a Master of Landscape Architecture with Distinction from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science in Urban Design with Departmental Honors from Parsons School of Design. His thesis, Turnpike Metabolism, explored the American highway system's interaction with the landscape, proposing a national framework in landscape metabolism. Ernest has given guest lectures at Columbia GSAPP, Parsons, and Harvard GSD, and has contributed to core option studios focused on infrastructure, ecological systems, and urban metabolism. In 2018, he was awarded the Irving Digital Innovation Fellowship at Harvard, where he developed technical workshops and researched filmic cartography, examining cinematic techniques that map territory and reshape collective perceptions of landscapes.

Research Interests