GSD Alumni and Friends
Thomas Paine's , MLA '74, China-based Landscape Architecture Firm Opens Office in Newton
The AGER Group, with offices in Shanghai and Beijing, offers a wide range of residential and commercial landscape architectural services. AGER Vice President Thomas Paine, a long-time Boston-based landscape architect who recently spent a year working in China, heads up the office. In addition to Paine, the firm also employs landscape architects Albert Chun and Yi-Ting Chou, who are both fluent in Mandarin.
“What sets us apart from other landscape design firms in the Boston area is that our practice is based on fresh, innovative design infused with a distinct Asian sensibility,” said Paine. “That means exuberant color, intricate forms and symbolism, and a blending of artifice and nature in bold yet harmonious ways. Of course sustainability is key in all of our designs.” While the Newton office focuses on landscape design, the firm as a whole also offers development planning as well as architectural, interior and corporate identity design services.
As one of the top five design firms in China, AGER is well-known for its work with the leading private developers in a fast growing marketplace and has designed Boao Forum, a resort on Hainan, the largest island off the Chinese coast; Taihu International Golf Club in Suzhou, the classical garden center of China; and Jinlin Tiandi at Xintiandi, Shanghai's fabulously successful clone of Quincy Market.
AGER Group is located at the Riverside Center on Grove Street in Newton. For more information, call 617-663-5258 or email tmpaine@agergroup.com.
Newly affluent Chinese are putting down $3-5 million cash on villas like this in the Spanish style Rose Garden, the most sought after gated community in Nanjing, where each villa comes with a swimming pool, jacuzzi, and outdoor kitchen in a lushly landscaped garden. The AGER Group designed this and similar projects across China."