2025 Fellows: Jack C. Goodnoe, FASLA, Michigan Chapter

Land Planning and Design Associates, Detroit, MI
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Jack Goodnoe has risen to be a leading landscape architect in the design of contemporary American and international cemeteries. His 40 years of industry-changing design has created, transformed, and enriched the landscapes of more than 125 cemeteries. His pioneering work in sustainable, green cemeteries is establishing new models and setting industry standards of environmental performance and design quality, such as his development of the concept of "ecotone burial," where a rich biological zone interfaces between two ecosystems. Jack is the landscape architect most chosen for designing new facilities within historic American Garden Cemeteries, where his work protects and enhances these rich 19th century landscapes. At the Forest Conservation Burial Ground in Ashland, Oregon, Jack's master plan incorporates both an extensive cemetery master plan and an ongoing site restoration project. This cemetery design employs his invention of ecotone burial zones, fostering environmental diversity and creating new, high-value burial areas. At The Preserve in Waterford, Michigan, his design turned groundwater seepage on the site into a natural stream amenity. Jack's designs for soft infrastructure, groundwater management, amenity development, native landscapes, burial layout, pedestrian circulation, meditation features, and indigenous rock memorialization in this early green cemetery established new models and standards for sustainable cemetery design. The design of Fountain of Remembrance Columbarium at Spring Grove Cemetery, in Cincinnati, Ohio, accommodates over 1,000 cremation niches while respecting and honoring its historic landscape. The growing preference for cremation and sustainable cemetery landscapes has driven the industry to reinvent itself, and Jack's work is at the forefront of this evolution.