Through regular online stories and our Outdoor Spaces newsletter and virtual events, AN covers the latest projects, topics, and products in landscape architecture. In this section, read about MVVA’s transformative Biidaasige Park in Toronto that redirects the Don River, among other timely case studies about urban forestry and Midwestern landscape architecture practices. Check out recommended products, gathered for your awareness and inspiration. At the end of the section, don’t miss our indepth resource directory, with recommended companies assembled from our coverage, events, and awards.
To the River!
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates takes on Toronto’s multidecade, multidisciplinary effort to restore the Don River’s mouth and improve climate resilience.
“The second that construction fences went down, people were swarming in,” said Emily Mueller De Celis, partner at the landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA). And that’s how it felt when the bus dropped me and other park-goers off east of the newly naturalized mouth of the Don River in Toronto. For many, the project to restore the Don River is synonymous with the Task Force to Bring Back the Don—a citizen advocacy group whose 1991 report outlined the aspirations for what would become a monumental, once-in-a-generation climate resiliency undertaking on the Canadian city’s shore.
The opening of Biidaasige Park on July 18 marked the first encounter Torontonians had with the Port Lands Flood Protection (PLFP)
project—the decades-long effort to renaturalize the mouth of the Don River, deliver flood protection, and provide spaces for living and recreation, at an overall cost of about $1 billion USD. But for those arriving later in the afternoon, as I did, one could be forgiven for thinking that it had long been part of our city. I entered the park through its northern edge, just south of Commissioners Street, to find that people were making it their own: Kids were climbing the already famous Snowy Owl Theatre and sliding down zip lines; others were busy in the many designated fishing areas; and a small crowd gathered by a paddleboat launch location.
Along with the cohort that had exited the bus, I joined dozens of others on foot and bicycle bound for the Commissioners Street
Bridge—the main eastern connecting point between the mainland and the new island (Ookwemin Minising) formed by the extended river valley. At the foot of the bridge, people slowed and looked: Here was their city as they’d never seen it before, set behind a freely flowing Don. The river had once been more like this— before the city’s port and industry grew and its path to Lake Ontario became increasingly constricted. “The river came down the valley to a hard, 90-degree turn—and water does not want to flow that way,” explained Mueller De Celis. “It became such a flood-prone area.”
Ahead of the Storm
The 98-acre Ookwemin Minising island, meaning “place of the black cherry trees” in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwemowin, is at the heart of the PLFP project. Biidaasige Park, meaning “sunlight shining toward us” in Anishinaabemowin, occupies 49 acres within it and integrates Indigenous placekeeping through native plantings, interpretive signage (NVision Insight Group), Indigenous trail tree markers (Two Row Architect), teaching signifiers (Solomon King and Brook McIlroy), and a shade structure (Tawaw Architecture Collective), among other spaces and installations to be
completed this year. In addition to the newly inaugurated park, the island will be home to the under-construction Promontory Park and a mixeduse development with 9,000 new homes.
MVVA, which joined the project after winning the 2007 Waterfront Toronto competition, has led its design and execution with a mandate to deliver flood protection, naturalization, and placemaking. “The beauty of the project is that so many hands have contributed to making it the way that it is today,” said Laura Solano, partner at MVVA. The large-scale, multidisciplinary effort has brought together fields ranging from marine and coastal engineering (GEI Consultants) to heritage conservation (ERA Architects).
“[The project] is first and foremost flood protection infrastructure,” said Jennifer Bonnell, historian and author of Reclaiming the Don “Over the course of its development, I was lucky enough to be able to tour the site, and you really got a sense of what a constructed landscape this is—how they built the bed of a new river channel and constructed it in ways that would direct floodwater in the event of a large century flood.”
The scale and complexity of the undertaking is especially apparent on foot. Moving through the vast under-construction stretches along Cherry Street and Commissioners Street—and
the intermingled remnants of port and industry— one feels small. All manner of earthmoving equipment can be heard and seen, sometimes perched atop mountains of dirt. A bike trip some weeks later took me farther than my legs alone could, to the southern and eastern edges of Ookwemin Minising. Here, planting is ongoing, and I was greeted by a surreal and hopeful sight: With the big city skyline as a backdrop—engulfed in the ever-present wildfire smoke that blows from the prairies—smiling faces under big sun hats looked and waved before returning to their work on the plants.
“Planting and then caring for the native plants on that scale is a massive achievement,” said Bonnell. “They employed tons and tons of human labor to weed all of those plants and to make sure that they had a fighting chance against invasive species.”
Expanding Access
From the beginning, the PLFP project embraced a deeply public, participatory process. “An important part of the design process—to make sure that we were making a park for everyone in Toronto—was to work with the community,” said Mueller De Celis. “We had open houses, pop-up consultations at different events...and
we closely collaborated with an Indigenous design adviser [MinoKamik Collective] to identify plant species that have cultural significance for the regional Indigenous communities.”
Besides human visitors, nonhuman species have found their place too: Bees and butterflies are busy pollinating, and the occasional blue jay and northern cardinal can be spotted. The data shows this as well: The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Bonnell told me, is already monitoring aquatic species and seeing what they were hoping to see in terms of numbers and diversity.
From its inception, Bonnell said, one of the main objectives of the Task Force to Bring Back the Don was to encourage people to come to the river, and to get them to love this space so that they would then be motivated to protect it. “You need the access to build the public will and the public connection with the space in order to have generations of people who care for it and want to protect it,” said Bonnell. “I think a similar idea went into this project.”
Sebastián López Cardozo is an architectural designer and writer based in Toronto. He is a founding editor of Architecture Writing Workshop and a coeditor of Nueva Vivienda: New Housing Paradigms in Mexico (Park Books, 2022).
DESIGN LEAD/PRIME: MVVA
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: MVVA
LIGHTING DESIGN: Domingo Gonzalez Associates
WETLAND AND MEADOW CONSULTANT: Dougan Ecology
WAYFINDING AND SIGNAGE: Entro Communications
HERITAGE CONSERVATION ARCHITECT: ERA Architects
OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE: ETM Associates
MARINE AND COASTAL ENGINEERING: GEI Consultants
GEOTECHNICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING: Geosyntec Consultants
IRRIGATION DESIGN: Hines
ECOLOGIST: Inter-Fluve
GEOTECHNICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING: Jacobs
HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING: LimnoTech
CODE CONSULTANT: LMDG
SOIL SCIENTIST: Olsson
PLAY CODE CONSULTANT: Reliable Reporting
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: RJC Engineers
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: Smith + Andersen
QP/ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATION: Stantec
COST ESTIMATING: Vermeulens
CIVIL ENGINEERING: WSP Canada
CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: EllisDon
PLAY STRUCTURES: MONSTRUM, WholeTrees Strutures, Richter
Spielgeräte, Earthscape
BENCHES: Landscape Forms, Streetlife
BBQ GRILLS: Most Dependable Fountains
Opposite page: Biidaasige Park comprises 49 acres within the 98-acre Ookwemin Minising island and features bike paths, native plantings, and more.
Below left: The Commissioners Street Bridge is the park’s main point of connection to the east between the mainland and Ookwemin Minising.
Below right: Kayaking is one of many recreational amenities the new park affords Torontonians.
Bottom left: The play structures mimic nature, enhancing the park’s biophilic qualities.
Bottom right: MVVA’s site plan shows how future development might be located adjacent to the reconstructed waterway.
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Tree Equity
Reed Hilderbrand’s Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan puts time-tested climate science into practice.
In 2019, Reed Hildberbrand released an urban forest master plan for Cambridge, Massachusetts. Four years later, the Biden administration allocated $1.5 billion to Urban and Community Forestry Grants as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Urban forests have massive benefits—they help combat heat-island effect and aid stormwater capture and runoff, to name just a couple. In New York City, trees remove 1,100 tons of air pollution each year. But despite the social, ecological, and financial merits of urban forests, tree coverage in the U.S. is shrinking. The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, lost on average 16 acres of urban tree canopy coverage per year between 2009 and 2018, according to a 2019 report. This was largely because of new building construction, increased paving, landscape renewal projects, and lack of adequate tree protection.
But Cambridge is not alone. Nationwide, about 175,000 acres were lost annually from 2009 to 2014, or about 1 percent of the country’s urban canopy over five years, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Now, architecture firms and government offices are working to reverse this trend. “For public health in the 21st century, we have to have cooling, and we have to
have air quality, and that’s what trees do,” said Eric Kramer, principal at the Cambridge-based landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand. Kramer is part of a team that leads the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan, a project that aims to cultivate a healthy urban forest across the city.
Reed Hilderbrand’s urban forest master plan is part of a larger effort in Cambridge to restore ecological balance in the city of 121,000 residents. Similar projects there include Stoss Landscape Urbanism’s Triangle Park, a recently completed green space in Kendall Square. Shade is Social Justice, a program funded by an Accelerating Climate Resilience grant from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, supports the construction of shading devices all throughout Cambridge, some designed by architects Gabriel Cira and Matthew Okazaki. SHADE, a local Cambridge nonprofit led by Jeff Goldenson, enables local high schoolers to design and build shading devices in their communities.
Expanding Canopy Coverage
Similar urban forest plans have in recent years come out of cities across the U.S: In 2023, Philadelphia released the Philly Tree Plan, a road map by Hinge Collective to grow its urban canopy over the next decade. Urban forest plans are also underway in Boston, New York City, Austin, and San Francisco. Like those other programs, Reed Hilderbrand’s Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan is not just about planting more trees—it also prioritizes retaining those that already exist. Seeds planted today won’t grow large canopies for many years, so limiting tree removal and providing solutions for the “in-between” period necessary for newly planted trees to grow tall is essential for a sustainable and healthy urban forest to take hold.
“You have to act at all scales,” said Kramer, who also teaches in the landscape programs at Harvard GSD and ETH Zurich, where he explores the future of urban forestry with students. “You have to think about the individual condition. The tree itself is living, and you have to care for that tree. It takes human intervention in most urban environments to care for a tree. But that tree is not isolated. It’s growing in a community, and that community is both ecological, cultural, and social.” Kramer and his team rely heavily on data to track progress and establish target interventions. Largely due to 20th century redlining, low-income, minority communities like in the nearby Boston neighborhood of Roxbury have less canopy coverage compared with wealthier areas. Thus, Reed Hilderbrand’s plan prioritizes areas of Cambridge with populations at greater risk of extreme heat.
Paradigm Shift
In 2023, the Biden administration allocated $1.5 billion to Urban and Community Forestry Grants as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. That same year, California received over $100 million in such grant funding, the most of any state. Today, among local officials, there is “emphasis on thinking about equitable distribution, mitigating heat, and we’re really working on ways that we can target communities in need,” said Dr. Max Robert Louis Piana, researcher, ecologist, and lecturer at Harvard GSD.
A crucial element to this work is developing deeper civic interest and engagement. Trees don’t just impact one person—even a fruit tree in someone’s front yard can provide shade for passersby. So it’s in everyone’s best interest to care for urban forests, Kramer said. That’s why community engagement is a core component of the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan.
“We need to have this connection to natural areas if we’re to nurture a greater global stewardship to address climate change,” Dr. Piana said. “Otherwise, it becomes distant and removed. It’s hard to wrap your head around the challenges that we face in terms of the climate crisis without experiencing biodiversity in natural areas.”
Kramer said he envisions future cities that, from ten thousand feet, will look primarily green with buildings dotting the landscape, rather than what cities are today: seas of gray with speckles of green. “I don’t think that’s impossible,” Kramer added. “Certainly, in cities we have bigger buildings and there’s going to be breaks in the forest for those buildings, but we have the capacity, both through techniques of planting and, if the investment is right, through the capacity of our city agencies and private actors to create continuous canopy in the rest of the open space. That’s what the city should look like.”
Eric Newstrom is a journalist in New York City. He writes primarily about climate change and sustainability.
COURTESY CITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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Don’t Call It the Breadbasket
How are Midwest landscape architecture practices transforming sites of extraction into spaces of ecological and social cohesion?
Strips of earth running north–south where long ago glaciers carved their paths in limestone cliffs; flatland prairies that have been burned for regrowth; vast stretches of cultivated farmland; swamps built into cities; and more: These are the landscapes that make up the American Midwest, a place that has been shaped by human agents and natural factors for millennia. Much of this contouring has colored this area as the nation’s “breadbasket,” ripe for picking, whether it be for food or fuel. For landscape architects working in this region, this shaping is both physical and metaphorical, and it continually informs their practices, whether they’re working in Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, or the eastern edges of the American Rust Belt. But instead of replicating extractive practices, they’re tapping into working-class histories and regenerative strategies that lay a path to a future where climate, labor, and natural resources become central to everyday life.
Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh
When Chris Merritt and Nina Chase opened their landscape architecture firm, Merritt Chase, eight years ago, the two founders, who met while working in Sasaki’s Boston office, wanted to focus specifically on the Midwest. They located their two headquarters in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh to “redefine what contemporary middle American landscape architecture is and could be,” Chase told AN With many commissions in Rust Belt areas, their projects, Merritt said, tell “comeback” stories. “We’re often participating in projects in rebounding downtowns, redeveloping urban districts from an economic lens, and thinking about trying to retain or recruit talent back to cities.”
From an ecological viewpoint, however, they recognize that many residents have familial or ancestral connections to the land itself; they’re also prompting residents to “come back” to that history. Many Midwesterners, he says, “grew up with a connection to a creek or river or forest or farm or field, and [we’re] capturing that from a material standpoint, so that local identity is authentically represented in these places that, otherwise, are cast under a broad stroke of the flyover state.”
Many of Merritt Chase’s commissions are located in swing states like Ohio. In Cleveland, they’re doing two projects: 1 Canal Basin Park, which will bring visitors back to the city’s industrial riverfront, where a canal and railroad supported the area’s economic history; and The Midline, an existing railway that will include a greenway and industrial development. In these projects Merritt Chase tries to instill pride in place. This could mean celebrating an area’s industrial or working-class history and generating the political will to make people-and-ecologycentric projects happen.
Chicago
Ernest Wong and his firm, site design group, have spent 35 years working across priorities that change with each mayoral administration in the Windy City. Though civic leaders don’t need much convincing about the benefits of things like climate resilience or outdoor space, site has built a reputation on delivering these types of landscape projects to those who most need them by focusing its attention on working-class people and, importantly, their futures.
“Historically, the city has been a very workingclass city and a working-class immigrant city,”
Wong said. “A lot of times, [these residents] are still working seven days a week, so being outdoors is a luxury.”
Site’s 2 Ping Tom Memorial Park is emblematic of the office’s ethos. Completed in 2013 and located in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood, which lacked green space for decades, the park, designed by site, delivered a space that asserts Chinatown was, is, and will continue to be inhabited by Chinese families. Chicago’s Chinatown is one of the few Chinatowns in the U.S. whose Chinese population is still growing. The park celebrates the area’s industrial past by inviting residents back to the once-polluted Chicago River and frames views of former railways, cantilevered bridges, and factories.
“I think that had we designed that park not along the Chicago River, it would not be as popular as it is now,” Wong explained. “I think that those qualities of the river and the railroads make that park what it is. It’s not necessarily the park space itself, but the things that are around it.”
Minneapolis
Minneapolis-based 3 Coen+Partners (CP) principal McKenzie Wilhelm speaks of Midwestern landscape practices as “regenerative,” meaning not only do they reaffirm the region’s working-class history and ethos but they are also spearheading the movement to change our relationship to the land itself. This attention might be expressed through caring for soil health or water quality, she said, especially as climate change’s effects ripple across the region. But it also means discovering what allows people to thrive, even in difficult climate conditions.
The Midwest, notes CP director Laura Kamin-Lyndgaard, is primed for this type of thinking. “The words that come to mind are incredibly hardworking, the sense of grit and perseverance, of not only weathering the harsh climates but embracing them,” she stated. With this attitude in mind, practitioners are now seeing land as part of maintaining human livelihoods through physical and cultural resource stewardship.
For Wilhelm, this might mean acknowledging that the Midwest nickname “America’s breadbasket” no longer fits. What feels more appropriate today is “an understanding of what a more reciprocal version of land stewardship looks like,” she said. “Land isn’t necessarily seen as just an asset that’s going to make you money, but also something that requires care and understanding at the systems level.”
The Forest and the Trees
Part of the work is acknowledging that the region’s economy has relinquished its share of the cash-crop/export economy that powered its original growth. Now, cultural and ecological assets are greater sources of growth and economic revitalization. While landscape architects certainly play a role in that effort, the region’s potential for positive reinvention must come with other political and architectural investments in its housing and sustainable sectors. Across the plains, forests, and urban environs, landscape architects, trained to analyze, design, and maintain natural environments, stand ready to lend a helping hand.
Anjulie Rao is a journalist and critic covering the built environment.
Lodes’s entry into outdoor lighting includes a collection of sleek luminaires, such as the slim, mushroom-shaped bollard, KINNO, and the projector inspired by photography, FOCUS.
This design by Sebastian Herkner merges a rounded, fluted glass and a regal metal frame for an elegant lighting collection,
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Bover reinterprets the classic lantern with clean, linear lines and a more precise control of light, enabling a collection of pendants, wall lamps, and streetlamps.
FLANEUR: MADE FOR AMERICA.
As public space continues to shed its rigidity and embrace the comfort of domestic life, Flaneur steps confidently into view. Designed by mmcité as a thoughtful response to this cultural shift, Flaneur is a collection of movable chairs, stools, and tables that brings interior calm to exterior settings. It is street furniture that embraces its urban origin, yet gently dissolves the line between public and private, communal and personal.
First glance
At first glance, the Flaneur line appears simple and understated. Beneath that quiet elegance lies remarkable strength. A lightweight galvanized steel structure, finished with a durable powder coating, supports either warm wooden slats or finely detailed steel rounds. Each element is crafted for ergonomic comfort, resilience, and mobility. It is stackable, portable, and easily repositioned within parks, plazas, cafés, or cultural venues.
America first
Flaneur was born with America in mind. In cities like New York, trust is placed in the hands of the public. Bryant Park, for instance, has 4,000 movable chairs and 1,000 movable tables. Not fixed in place, but loose and liberated. Here, the arrangement of furniture becomes
a kind of urban dance. Strangers shift a table toward the sun. Friends gather in circles under trees. Solitary thinkers angle their chairs just so. The space is never static, always alive. This is more than convenience. This is democracy made visible. As the American Planning Association notes, movable furniture empowers people to shape their surroundings. And remarkably, only a few pieces go missing each year. In return, the park gains something priceless: spontaneity, interaction, and a sense of shared ownership. In early 2025, mmcité introduced Flaneur in the United States, reflecting the values of flexibility, empowerment, and inclusivity. It is more than a product line; it is a philosophy of urban ease. As cities become softer, more welcoming, and more expressive, Flaneur offers an architectural tool that shapes public space not through permanence, but through possibility. Flaneur is made for America.
Made in America – soon
As Flaneur continues to shape more human-centered public spaces across the country, we’re taking the next step in its journey. We are bringing production closer to home. In response to growing demand and a deepening commitment to the communities we serve, we are actively working toward manufacturing Flaneur in the United States. This evolution reinforces our belief that great design should move with ease and integrity across spaces, across cities, and now, across the sea into American production. Soon, Flaneur won’t just be made for America, it will be Made in America.
FLANEUR, SOON MADE IN AMERICA.
Reprogramming the Land
dwg. creates a biodiverse landscape for an office building designed by Gensler on a former brownfield site in East Austin.
In any city, building atop a floodplain is a challenge. In Austin, where a five-hundred-year rainfall is now considered a one-hundred-year rainfall, the project becomes almost unimaginably difficult. On a property situated on a now-remediated brownfield site with heavy, alluvial clay soils, a developer seeking to build a sprawling office campus dared to take on an even more complex task. Gensler and local landscape architecture firm dwg. worked together to transform a 30-acre site dubbed Springdale Green at 1011 Springdale Road in East Austin for the Jay Paul Company. In addition to two office buildings and a parking garage, the campus boasts a verdant landscape programmed for recreation and wellness, as well as flood mitigation.
Gensler sited the two office buildings to the north, placing them outside of the FEMA floodplain, which left room on the rest of the site for dwg. to design a regenerative hydrology system, an elevated boardwalk, and acres of land planted with native species.
“From a landscape perspective, it was a 20-acre challenge of epic proportion,” Daniel Woodroffe, president and founder of dwg., told AN . He added that his job entailed thinking about how to “leverage the land to tell a meaningful story, not just of cleaning up and removing invasive species, but about the modern trends in workplace and how people want to work [and have] access to the outdoors and natural light.”
An elevated 0.62-mile wooden boardwalk, circuitously routed through the campus, became a linchpin for delivering this vision.
“The boardwalk is a very surgical, lighttouch element but at the same time immersive, because it goes from 18 inches above the meadows all the way up into the canopy of the trees and then back down again,” Woodroffe described.
The walkway begins at the campus amphitheater and event lawn, located outside of the ground-floor gym facilities. Follow its meandering path, and one comes across programming also designed for office work and leisure. Among these activations are hammocks, a pavilion, and a bird blind. The architects and designers imagined the pavilion as if it had always been there, envisioning that nature had grown around it, and not the other way around. The small openair building is equipped with modern amenities like internet access and restrooms. Workers can convene under the shade of its wood canopy for meetings, to host a happy hour, take a phone call, or take in nature.
“The pavilion is an abstract of the elements of the building: the concrete corners, the wood soffits, the use of the D’Hanis terra-cotta block to create a temple in the woods,” Woodroffe said. Just up the path, the bird blind posits a similar environment. A curved canopy structure was lined with wood slats facing the pathway and a screen of stainless-steel black mesh on its other side. Furnishings inside the open-air volume face out toward woodlands. This location was chosen for a number of reasons: It’s the highest point of boardwalk; it had the largest grove of elm trees and the largest concentration of red cardinal birds.
“We call it the bird blind because it is up in the canopy of the trees,” Woodroffe added. “It is
almost imperceptible that you’re seeing through that mesh out into the canopy of the trees.”
Deciding what trees to leave and what vegetation to plant was informed by the area’s geology and Austin’s heritage tree ordinance. Two large live oaks—one of which is three hundred years old—were transplanted, and more than four thousand new trees were added to the site. The site’s ecology combines Blackland Prairie— prominent in the area but shrinking from urban sprawl—with that of riparian wetlands. Woodroffe and dwg. worked with an ecologist and a soil scientist to select plants for the property.
Shielded from sight but essential to the narrative of Springdale Green’s transformation is water. A 650,000-gallon cistern stores rainwater and HVAC condensate for 100 percent of the site’s irrigation needs. The water is released slowly over time as needed. As a result, the campus’s new bio-retention basins and rain gardens are nearly superfluous. Prior to this project, the neighborhood had a serious flooding issue. An interbasin transfer, negotiated with the neighbors, now means water from the north of the site gets directed through a swale and into the campus’s floodplain meadows for storage.
At Springdale Green, dwg.’s “light-touch” approach has managed to change the trajectory for a maligned site, restoring its ecology amid increasing flood risk and urban expansion. KK
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Glittering
Landscape Resources
This listing combines outdoor companies and products featured in our coverage, case studies, product highlights, and awards. By Arlo Freedman
Consultants
Arup
arup.com
This global consultancy powerhouse provides advisory services for firms and organizations whose business is the built environment, including landscape architecture.
Atelier Ten atelierten.com
Atelier Ten is a global sustainability-minded environmental design consultant with lighting design and engineering capabilities, offering services including carbon strategy and energy analysis.
Biohabitats
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Biohabitats is a consultant specializing in projects centered in ecological restoration, conservation, and climate resilience, with experience across the United States.
Brightworks Sustainability brightworks.net
Brightworks is a consultancy firm guiding projects toward environmental sustainability for residential, commercial, and governmental sectors.
Brookwater brookwater.com
Brookwater, specializing in irrigation consulting and design, assists with water management for parks, transportation, and residential projects for a wide range of clients.
Climate Positive Design climatepositivedesign.org
Climate Positive Design is a consultant offering guidance in greenhouse gas reduction for the exterior built environment and supporting biodiversity in landscaping.
DataBased+ databasedplus.com
DataBased+ is an innovative building systems design firm offering sustainable planning services and climate analysis.
Fluidity Design Consultants fluidity-design.com
Fluidity features a multidisciplinary team of architects, designers, engineers, and technologists devoted to fountain and water design for many types of projects.
Footprint Consulting footprintconsulting.green/ en
Footprint Consulting provides consulting services to quantify and reduce greenhouse gas emissions for climate-conscious architectural projects.
GEI Consultants geiconsultants.com
GEI provides geotechnical, environmental, and civil design consulting for clients across the United States and Ontario.
Irrigation Consulting irrigationconsulting.com
Irrigation Consulting provides sustainable irrigation design counseling for landscape and outdoor recreational projects, with offices in New Hampshire and North Carolina.
Phyto Studio phytostudio.com
Phyto Studio is a nature-based design studio with landscape architecture and ecological horticulture consulting services.
Pine & Swallow Environmental pineandswallow.com
Pine & Swallow Environmental provides horticultural soil consulting to public and private clients for the construction of landscape development projects.
Plántica plantica.mx
Plántica specializes in consultancy for landscape architectural projects, vertical gardens, and green roofs.
RED partners with project teams to protect healthy ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes, providing robust regenerative solutions.
RWDI rwdi.com
RWDI is a global consultancy with climate and environmental engineering services for landscaping projects.
Stanley Consultants stanleyconsultants.com
Stanley Consultants is a global consulting engineering firm rooted in sustainable and energyefficient solutions for diverse markets.
Stok stok.com
Stok is a consulting team with a range of services in decarbonization for the built environment, including energy engineering and sustainability consulting.
Studio Ludo studioludo.org
Studio Ludo is a nonprofit playground design consultant firm based in Philadelphia, with expertise in playground safety solutions and risk-benefit assessment.
Urban Canopy Works urbancanopyworks.com
Urban Canopy Works is a firm dedicated to the advancement of the tree canopy in the urban environment, providing forestry consultant services.
Vectorworks vectorworks.net
This design software company provides architects with intuitive, powerful tools to create whatever designs they can imagine.
Outdoor Kitchens & Baths
Arhaus arhaus.com
Arhaus is a sustainably sourced furniture and decor company with outdoor kitchen and furniture lines.
Belgard belgard.com
Belgard is a California-based outdoor products company with a large outdoor kitchen collection.
BlueStar bluestarcooking.com
BlueStar is a 140-year-old Pennsylvania-based kitchen appliance company with design-forward products, including many in customizable colors.
Dacor dacor.com
Dacor provides high-performing kitchen and refrigeration appliances for indoor and outdoor spaces.
Danver danver.com
Danver is an outdoor stainlesssteel cabinet and kitchen manufacturer based in Connecticut.
Duravit USA duravit.com
Duravit makes high-quality bathroom ceramics and furniture, working with well-known designers and expert manufacturers.
Fisher & Paykel fisherpaykel.com
Fisher & Paykel is a luxury kitchen appliance company with a large product line of outdoor grills.
Neolith neolith.com
Neolith is a leading sintered stone surface manufacturer featuring kitchen and bathroom products suited for the outdoors.
Novara novara.es
Novara is an outdoor kitchen supply company with bespoke and customization capabilities.
Rbrohant rbrohant.com
Rbrohant is a bathroom product manufacturer designing premium outdoor baths and showers.
Room & Board roomandboard.com
The modern and contemporary furniture retailer features a diverse range of outdoor kitchen furniture.
Talenti Outdoor Living talentispa.com
Talenti is a recognized Italian outdoor furniture company designing kitchens for commercial and residential projects.
TOTO toto.com/en
TOTO creates spa-inspired outdoor bathroom appliances for hotels and resorts.
Watrline watrline.com
Watrline is a designer and manufacturer of outdoor showers for residential and hospitality projects.
Outdoor Lighting
Acuity Brands acuitybrands.com
Acuity Brands provides a wide range of sustainable outdoor lighting solutions.
Ambientec ambientec.co.jp
Ambientec is a Japanese lighting design brand specializing in portable, rechargeable, waterproof LED lamps.
Amerlux manufactures lighting fixtures for the commercial sector with product lines for both indoors and outdoors.
Artemide artemide.com
Artemide is an illumination brand with products for architectural lightscapes in public and private outdoor spaces.
B-K Lighting bklighting.com
B-K Lighting provides high-quality sustainable lighting fixtures and power supplies for the outdoors.
Cerno cernogroup.com
Cerno designs decorative exterior architectural lighting systems with a focus on sustainability.
Cyclone Lighting cyclonelighting.com
Cyclone designs, develops, and manufactures high-performance, durable outdoor luminaires and accessories.
Diabla diablaoutdoor.com
Diabla is an avant-garde Spanish outdoor furniture company with a range of lamp products.
ERCO erco.com
ERCO is an international specialist in architectural lighting with LED technology.
Flos flos.com
Flos is a European company designing luxury furnishing and lighting for interiors and exteriors.
Inter-lux inter-lux.com
Inter-lux provides a curated collection of exterior lighting products and tools.
Landscape Forms landscapeforms.com
Landscape Forms crafts artful furniture and lighting fixtures for commercial exteriors.
Lebello lebello.com
Lebello is a designer and manufacturer of colorful outdoor furniture and lighting, primarily for restaurants, hospitality, and retail.
Luminii luminii.com
Luminii manufactures highly modifiable, made-to-order linear LED luminaires for indoor and outdoor applications.
Luminis luminis.com
Luminis creates functional and modern luminaires for diverse applications.
Modern Forms modernforms.com
Modern Forms offers outdoor luminaires featuring lamp, flush mount, and step light collections.
Qu Lighting qu-lighting.com
Qu Lighting is an Italian outdoor bespoke lighting designer with an array of sleek exterior lighting products.
RBW rbw.com
RBW is a New York–based independent design and manufacturing company utilizing sustainable energy in its exterior lighting product line.
Selux selux.us
Selux designs timeless lighting fixtures for exterior settings, with modular design allowing for smart functions.
Stickbulb stickbulb.com
Stickbulb manufactures architectural and custom outdoor luminaires and repurposes salvaged pin-oak from the NYC urban forest in its TREELINE collection.
Tala talalighting.com
Tala is a London-based company that creates low-carbon and design-forward sustainable exterior light fixtures.
Targetti targettiusa.com
Targetti specializes in elegant architectural lighting for interior and exterior environments.
Vibia
vibia.com
Vibia creates outdoor lighting products that utilize low-voltage LEDs for efficient energy consumption and well-being.
Outdoor Textiles
Bernhardt bernhardt.com
Bernhardt offers a large catalog of high-performance and high-design outdoor fabrics for residential outdoor living spaces.
Brentano brentanofabrics.com
Brentano Design Studio creates sophisticated fabrics and wallcoverings for indoor and outdoor spaces, with stain-resistant and easy-clean finish options.
Carnegie carnegiefabrics.com
Carnegie manufactures environmentally friendly textile, wallcovering, and acoustic solutions for outdoor applications.
