Stoss Landscape Urbanism Wins Award

The Erie Street Plaza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, designed by 2012 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award winners Stoss Landscape Urbanism is a small urban plaza in the Historic Third Ward district where the Milwaukee River meets the Federal Channel.

Stoss Landscape Urbanism, a Boston-based collaborative design and planning studio are announced as the 2012 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award winner in the category of landscape architecture. The award was established by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum to honor lasting achievement in American design and to celebrate excellence, innovation and enhancement of the quality of life.

Each fall, a call for nominations go out to leading designers, educators, journalists, cultural figures, corporate leaders and design enthusiasts from every state in the nation. Nominees generally submit resumes, design statements or portfolios of work for the jury to review. The National Design Awards jurors are chosen for their prominence and expertise in the design world, the 2012 jurors included:

John C. Jay/Jury Chair, Global Executive Creative Director and Partner, Wieden+Kennedy

Michelle Berryman, Principal and CEO, Echo Visualization

Jeanne Gang, Principal and Founder, Studio Gang Architects

Lee F. Mindel, FAIA, Founding Partner, Shelton, Mindel & Associates

Melody Roberts, Senior Director, Concept & Design, McDonald’s Corporation

Eric Rodenbeck, Founder, CEO and Creative Director, Stamen Design

Behnaz Sarafpour, President and Designer, Behnaz Sarafpour

Alice Twemlow, Chair, MFA Design Criticism, School of Visual Arts

Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor and Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

The focus of Stoss Landscape Urbanism is landscape architecture and urban design, which has become known as landscape urbanism. Chris Reed founded the firm in 2000 and Scott Bishop joined the firm five years later as an Associate Principal. The firm’s projects include The CityDeck in Green Bay, Wisconsin; Erie Street Plaza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; The Plaza at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Bass River Park on Cape Cod.

Chris Reed has been recognized internationally for his innovative, hybridized approach to public space. His research interests include the impact of ecological sciences on design thinking, and city-making strategies informed by landscape systems and dynamics; he is co-editor (with ecologist and planner Nina-Marie Lister) of an upcoming volume of research and drawing titled Critical + Projective Ecologies. Reed received a Master in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and an AB in Urban Studies from Harvard College. He is currently Adjunct Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Associate principal, Scott Bishop, is a registered landscape architect in Michigan, Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as a human ecologist. His work involves a variety of ecologies across the world, including environments in Eastern Africa, the Middle East, North America, Asia, and Europe. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design as a studio critic for the Department of Landscape Architecture, and he directed the Stoss Studio as the Sasaki Distinguished Visiting Critic at the Boston Architectural College. Bishop holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic.