Who I Am

Lisa Taranto is an explorer of architecture+ecology. She holds more than three decades of study, practice, curiosity, and adventures in architecture, ecology, art and design. She enjoys working with people, helping to wisely engage with their surroundings and personal economies, to create beautiful and productive relationships with land. She recently spent 7 years as the Head of Horticulture at Menla Mountain Retreat, in the heart of the Catskill Mountains, physically engaged with this remote valley, deeply observing and quietly working with the range of it’s ecosystems-from the highly cultivated to the pure wild. Menla is retreat center immersed in Tibetan Buddhism, with 365 acres of wild forest and a 65 acre campus, As a young student of architecture she spent one and a half years living and working at the visionary project of Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti in the late 1980’s. As an artist, once upon a time, she was awarded a residency at the prestigious Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado. She engages with the land as an ever evolving canvas. Strong of imagination, she envisions a world where ecosystems are restored, the built environment is in a reciprocal relationship with it’s homeland, and we humans live in a kind and interdependent dance with all of nature, and each other. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.