Archinect - News

Kate Orff named 2025 Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal winner

2024-10-25T17:01:00-04:00

SCAPE founder Kate Orff has been named as the Tau Sigma Delta 2025 Gold Medal winner by the Grand Chapter of the Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society for Architecture and Allied Arts in partnership with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).

Orff, who in April of last year was named as a 'TIME 100' honoree, was described as a "leading voice in landscape architecture." She will next deliver the closing keynote address at the ACSA’s 113th annual conference, which takes place from March 20-22, 2025 in New Orleans. The firm has recently been announced as the lead for a major adaptive reuse redevelopment project in Connecticut in addition to landing two Honor Awards selection at the 2024 ASLA Professional Awards in September.

SCAPE teams with BIG for Manresa Island power plant redevelopment on Long Island Sound

2024-10-02T11:27:00-04:00

Landscape and planning studio SCAPE has announced the addition of architects BIG to a new adaptive reuse project in southern Fairfield County, Connecticut, called Manresa Island.

The project, which is set to reimagine a decommissioned coal-fired power plant into a new 125-acre public park in the city of Norwalk, intends to elevate the site’s endemic wetlands and biodiversity while creating a range of opportunities for dining and recreation.

Image courtesy SCAPE and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)

Three buildings — the two 22,000-square-foot boiler and turbine towers and a 8,200-square-foot office component — will be redeveloped through the effort, added to by SCAPE’s master planning and landscape contribution, and connected via a newly unearthed scenic waterway.

Image courtesy SCAPE and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)

The project's features include an expansive green lawn and meadow with a public beach. A 1.75-mile tract of waterfront access will be created, offering residents an alternative t...

SCAPE completes Living Breakwaters coastal resiliency project for Staten Island

2024-10-01T11:01:00-04:00

SCAPE has completed work on the $111 million Living Breakwater coastal resiliency project in Staten Island, New York three years after the start of construction in the borough's Tottenville neighborhood.

Per SCAPE: "The project consists primarily of 2,400 linear feet of near-shore breakwaters—partially submerged structures built of stone and ecologically-enhanced concrete units—that will break waves, reduce (and eventually reverse) erosion of the beach along Conference House Park, and provide a range of habitat spaces for oysters, fin fish and other marine species."

Image courtesy SCAPE/Ty Cole

Staten Island was heavily impacted by Superstorm Sandy, prompting the launch of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Rebuild By Design competition in 2013. A live oyster installation for the project is expected to follow by 2027.

Image courtesy SCAPE/Ty Cole

Sam Lubell on cultural institutions’ newfound embrace of landscape architecture

2024-04-23T18:30:00-04:00

[...] such projects have fundamentally transformed in recent years, reflecting, among other things, seismic shifts in both museums’ priorities and the profession of landscape architecture, as well as a surge in interest in outdoor space because of the pandemic. The first rule: don’t dare call them gardens. These are sophisticated landscapes integrating — and enhancing — institutions’ missions while also encouraging education, sustainability and a much-needed sense of civic welcome.

Sam Lubell of the New York Times talks to Walter Hood, William Fain, and Kate Orff for a survey focused on the expanding role of landscape architecture in major American cultural sector projects.

He says: "The ascension of landscape in the museum world shows no signs of abating." Projects of note include the Hirshhorn Museum’s debated Hiroshi Sugimoto-led sculpture garden redesign, Studio-MLAand Frederick Fisher and Partners’ work for the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, and the forthcoming Calder Gardens in Philadelphia from Piet Oudolf and Herzog & de Meuron.

"Museums are places where you can say something about the culture. Where we can begin to vet some of these things that we don’t want to talk about. It goes back to the idea of these being the new civic spaces, where honest conversations can be had," Walter Hood told him. (A look at his firm's contributions to the new International African American Museum in South Carolina by Moody Nolan and Pei Cobb Freed can be found ...

Landscape Architect Kate Orff named 2023 TIME 100 Influential People honoree

2023-04-13T13:28:00-04:00

Historically, landscape architecture was concerned with the composition of private gardens, but Kate Orff is a landscape architect who’s never been hemmed in by garden walls—seeking instead to liberate landscape to do nothing less than repair our warming planet through design.

The SCAPE founder and Columbia GSAPP Urban Design Program Director joins an exclusive club of TIME Magazine’s ‘100 Influential People’ that includes David Adjaye, Bjarke Ingels, Wang Shu, Jeanne Gang, and Kengo Kuma. (HOK was also cited last year for the Terminal B project at LaGuardia Airport, which the magazine said sets “the gold standard for airport design.”)

Orff was previously included on Rolling Stone's list of “25 People Shaping the Future in Tech, Science, Medicine, Activism and More” in 2017, the same year she was awarded the MacArthur "Genius" Grant fellowship in a first for landscape architects nationwide.

Studio Gang and SCAPE partner for Memphis riverfront park

2020-05-27T16:33:00-04:00

A proposal for the Memphis River Parks Partnership's Studio Gang- and SCAPE-designed waterfront park in Memphis has taken a step forward as the firms present their latest visions for the 30-acre project site.

Site plan.

Following years of design and community engagement, the semi-final design of Tom Lee Park includes a collection of discretely programmed landscaped areas designed alternately to accommodate human needs alongside those of the mighty Mississippi River.

The park's central gathering areas.

The northernmost section of the park connects to Memphis's Beale Street and to a forthcoming downtown art museum, while central portions are geared more toward neighboring community use.

An interior view of the Civic Canopy.

Here, a "Civic Canopy" offers a large, flat expanse for public gatherings and events. A central forested overlook provides shade as well as a promontory from which to see the river and the city in an adjacent area .

View of the nature overlook zone at the southern ...

David Benjamin of The Living and Kate Orff of SCAPE make Rolling Stone's list for the "25 People Shaping the Future in Tech, Science, Medicine, Activism and More"

2017-11-29T20:27:00-05:00

Architect David Benjamin of The Living and Kate Orff of SCAPE have both been selected by Rolling Stone as some of the "25 People Shaping the Future in Tech, Science, Medicine, Activism and More."

Benjamin, a previous YAP winner and "socially conscious mad scientist" according to Rolling Stone, is known for his innovation and experimentation in building materials. Past notable projects have included organic bricks made from mushrooms and unusually light airplane parts made from algorithms based off mold growth.

Also making the list, Orff, who runs the landscape-architecture and urban design firm SCAPE, is a recent recipient of the 2017 MacArthur Grant. The Genius is known for her eco-sensitive approach that integrates urban design, landscape design, and architecture in order to address issues of climate change, loss of biodiversity, resiliency, and culture. She is currently working on a project in Kentucky that will turn the footprint of a polluted creek into an interactive path spot...