James Corner Field Operations won the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s 2010 National Design Award for landscape design. Established in 1998 by James Corner, ASLA, Field Operations is a cutting-edge landscape architecture and urban design firm based in New York City. The Cooper-Hewitt writes: “With the cross-disciplinary backgrounds of many of its 30 professionals, including in landscape architecture, urban design, architecture and communication art, the firm creates high-quality design solutions for cities, landscapes and public spaces. The practice has raised the visibility and efficacy of landscape architecture in shaping and enriching people’s lives, particularly in urban environments and the public realm.”
Recent Field Operations projects cited by the Cooper-Hewitt include the High Line in New York, City (see an ASLA case study of the project), the pool decks and gardens of City Center in Las Vegas, Fresh Kills Park in Staten Island, N.Y. (learn about Field Operations and Steven Handel’s ecological restoration work on the site), Governors Island in New York Harbor (see earlier post), Race Street Pier in Philadelphia, Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tenn., and Lake Ontario Park in Toronto (learn more).
This year’s two other finalists in the landscape design category are Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture (read an interview with Cochran), a firm that “seamlessly integrates landscape, art and architecture,” and Stoss Landscape Urbanism, a Boston-based firm focusing on landscape architecture, urban design and planning.
The museum says nominations were solicited from more than 2,500 designers, educators, journalists, cultural figures, and corporate leaders across the country. To be considered, nominees must have at least seven years of experience, and winners are selected based on the “level of excellence, innovation and public impact of their body of work.”
In other news, the first Urban Land Institute (ULI) Amanda Burden Urban Open Space award went to Campus Martius Park in Detroit. The award, named after the current chair of the New York City planning commission and director of the New York Department of City Planning, is meant to recognize an “outstanding example of a public open space that has catalyzed the transformation of the surrounding community.”
Campus Martius Park, designed by Rundell Ernstberger Associates LLC, is known as “Detroit’s official gathering place.” The 2.5-acre space is a “vibrant central square, created from a desolate downtown parcel, [and] has become the heart of the city’s downtown redevelopment initiative” writes ULI. The park, which draws upwards of two million visitors per year, features extensive landscaping, movable seating, and an ice-skating rink. ULI says the park has catalyzed $700 million in local real estate development, including new cafes, shops, and the new Compuware world headquarters.
In an interview with Urban Land, Burden said “Campus Martius Park is an exemplary model of a creative transformation of a central city-space. It serves both as a gathering place for resident and visitors, and as a much needed catalyst to the city. This vibrant 2.5-acre green space project optimism and civic pride — quite the opposite of the dire stories and images that often characterized this city.”
Image credit: (1) Fresh Kills Park, NYC, James Corner Field Operations (2) Campus Martius Park, Detroit, Downtown Detroit Partnership
