Kathryn Gustafson, “Being Local When You’re Not”

Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) is a landscape architecture practice based in Seattle, Washington. The 2011 recipient of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Award in Landscape Architecture, GGN was founded in 1999 by partners Jennifer Guthrie, Shannon Nichol, and Kathryn Gustafson. GGN’s work is highly varied in scale and type — from furniture, like the Maggie Bench, to campuses and master plans, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the 2011 Downtown Cleveland Group Plan. GGN offers special experience in designing high-use landscapes in complex, urban contexts. Boston’s North End Parks, over the I-93 freeway, and Millennium Park’s Lurie Garden, on a 5-story parking structure, are examples of GGN’s designs for accessible, healthy, and sculptural urban spaces on rooftops and other urban structures. The landform of each space is carefully shaped to feel serenely grounded in its context and comfortable at all times — whether bustling with crowds, offering moments of contemplation, or doing both at once. The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, is an example of a space designed to inspire and comfort either one or hundreds of people.   Project awards include multiple ASLA National Design Excellence Awards, Tucker Architectural Awards, and AIA/ASLA Honor and Merit awards for Design. 
 
 

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