Envisioning Landscapes: The Transformative Environments of OJB

Description

This debut monograph of the visionary landscape architecture firm OJB uncovers the philosophy that guides the practice and reveals the transformative power of landscape through a selection of case studies drawn from the firm's thirty-year history. Founded in 1989 by landscape architect James Burnett, OJB--the Office of James Burnett--has since grown to nearly one hundred professionals working across five offices and has established itself as a leader in the field for its ambitious approach to community-building through landscape. At its core, the firm believes that landscape is a social and collective tool for integration, reclamation, and healing. This principle guides all of the firm's projects across sectors, from its designs promoting restorative healthcare, such as campuses for hospitals and wellness centers, to large-scale urban landscapes conceived to reconnect and revitalize communities, such as the acclaimed Myriad Botanical Gardens and the other initiatives completed as part of Oklahoma City's Project 180 public works program. This book highlights OJB's remarkable and meaningful work--and the philosophy that drives it--through projects of varied typologies arranged in a rhythm progressing from single works to longer multi-project narratives in which landscapes connect and build on each other over several years to create thoughtfully realized and impactful environments.

OJB Landscape Architecture challenges the conventional boundaries of landscape architecture, emphasizing placemaking as a mechanism for healing, gathering, and celebration. OJB is the recipient of more than ninety state and national design awards, including several national awards for the creation of urban parks that return civic engagement to the forefront of cities. Christopher Hawthorne is Los Angeles's first Chief Design Officer. Prior to that, he was the architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2018, the architecture critic for Slate, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. He is the author, with Alanna Stang, of The Green House- New Directions in Sustainable Architecture. Peter Walker is an internationally recognized landscape architect and founder of PWP Landscape Architecture. Over five decades, Walker has designed parks, gardens, corporate headquarters, urban landscapes, campuses, museums, and memorials around the world. Among his significant projects are the National 9/11 Memorial in New York, the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, MD, and the Barangaroo waterfront renewal project in Sydney, Australia, which won an American Architecture Prize for Landscape Design of the Year.

Winner of the 2020 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture 2020 Architect's Newspaper Best of Design Award Honorable Mention