Hargreaves Associates (now Hargreaves Jones) has been at the forefront of landscape architecture and planning for 30+ years and is globally renowned for the transformation of neglected urban sites, waterfronts and campuses into memorable places that have become icons for their cities. The firm has won over 100 national and international awards and is the 2016 winner of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and the Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize. The work focuses on producing memorable landscapes for a wide range of urban design, waterfront, public park, academic, corporate, institutional, and residential projects – that range in scale from large and environmentally complex, such as the 274 acre Parklands for London’s 2012 Olympics, Crissy Field in San Francisco, and Louisville’s Waterfront Park to place-making projects such as the University of Cincinnati’s campus to small plazas and gardens such as 555 Mission St in San Francisco and Caruthers Park in Portland.

The offices in New york, San Francisco and Cambridge, MA, work on projects interchangeably, united by a philosophy of strong design fueled by investigation and research rather than preconceived notions of pattern or form-making. In some cases the work amplifies the natural phenomena of a site with highly sculptural landscapes. In others, the work focuses on large scale restoration of complex environmental systems and the notions of setting a landscape in motion – open ended yet clearly re-made. Other projects revolve around narrative qualities and create memorable places for institutions, individuals and communities that inspire emotional response and host our cultural aspirations, and others transform infrastructural impediments into public realm opportunities, often in the heart of cities and their waterfronts. These landscape and garden projects richly layer plantings, natural systems and places for people within strong design organizational strategies to create places that allow individual interpretation and that foreground the landscape itself as a destination.