Liesl Ulrich-Verderber

Phrog Eye Photo has been my pet project since 2008. What started as a way to give back to my community in high school has grown into a way for me to capture the world around me as I travel. (Check out my story!)

During my time at Harvard, I began to explore a passion I have had since my childhood by diving in to the world of architecture and design. Over the past four years, I have had the opportunity to design a home and and eat at its kitchen table a year later, to hone my design eye and senses studying at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and to explore the economic forces that influence and constrain our daily lives.

When I wasn’t studying architecture or economics, I was taking every opportunity possible to travel during my time at Harvard. I spent summers studying abroad in Southeast Asia and England, and my winter and spring breaks traveling and organizing international conferences with the Harvard College in Asia Program.

These travels, coupled with my upbringing in Vermont, have inspired in me the importance of a grass roots approach to sustainable design. Whether I am looking for the best way to make our lived spaces more efficient, or researching how design can help businesses with sustainable missions flourish, I am a firm believer in the power of conscientious design.

For me, design is the conscientious addition of art and information. Design, at its best, is about listening, observing. There is beauty in using data, knowledge, and ideas to collaboratively create something that inspires because it is novel and useful.