GUSTAFSON GUTHRIE NICHOL

National Mall Competition
Union Square

"Our design for a durable and flexible plaza will bring life and activity to the site and will take the pressure from the mall's lawn panels, making it a more sustainable landscape."
- Rodrigo Abela, Principal

This winning design for Union Square, situated at the base of the Capitol in Washington DC, engages visitors with an impressive monumental scale, while also providing comfortable places for a range of experiences and voices.

CityCenterDC

“This project is going to be a true city center - our downtown retail anchor - befitting a world class city.”
- Mayor Adrian M. Fenty

CityCenterDC is a 10-acre site in the heart of downtown Washington DC, developed by Hines/Archstone with architecture led by Foster + Partners. CityCenterDC converts former superblocks into a mixed-use urban center with a fine-grained network of streets and alleys, plazas, a park, and multiple landscaped terraces.

CityCenterDC is now under construction.

Lurie Garden

Part of Millennium Park, the Lurie Garden brings the experience and ecology of Chicago’s native prairie landscape into its densest downtown neighborhood – while providing spaces for resting, socializing, and a myriad of cultural activities. Over 4 million visitors per year from 21 countries visited the Lurie Garden in 2008.

Photo: Timothy Hursley

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Campus

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation campus is designed as a locally grounded environment for global work and dialogue. In concert with the campus architecture by NBBJ, GGN designed a campus landscape for outdoor work and collaborative problem-solving. A series of serene spaces celebrate the Foundation's roots in Seattle, with a growing forest canopy, rainwater-fed water gardens, courtyards of salvaged cobble, and extensive green roofs.

Phase One of the campus was completed and certified LEED NC 2.2 Platinum in 2011.

Robert and Arlene
Kogod Courtyard

The Donald W. Reynolds Center home of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery is a National Historic Landmark Building in Washington, DC. This award-winning project was a collaboration with Foster + Partners.

UrbanEdge
for Landscape Forms

"The UrbanEdge family of framing and seating elements is designed to be flexible, customizable, and comfortable, like an outdoor living room."
- Stacy Vayanos, Associate

The UrbanEdge collection is produced by Landscape Forms, the world’s largest manufacturer of high-design site and streetscape furniture collections. UrbanEdge pairs GGN’s experience in designing urban spaces with Landscape Forms’ expertise in developing beautiful site furnishings that address issues in urban environments; built to perform and endure under conditions of high-usage.

Explore the collection at Landscape Forms.

North End Parks

The "Big Dig" burial of the I-93 Freeway beneath Boston created a swath of reclaimed land through downtown. The North End Parks, a 3-acre series of parcels on the tunnel lid, created a welcoming social space at the threshold to the North End neighborhood.

The Parks, GGN's collaboration with CSS Boston, opened views and restored street connections that had been severed for decades.

Towards Paradise
Venice Biennale: Out There

Towards Paradise was the first significant installation of landscape as part of the Venice Architecture Biennale. The installation was conceived as a contemporary allegory in the broadest sense - taking the visitor on a journey through earthly dilemmas, evoking what has been lost and what can be gained between man and the landscape.

National Museum of African
American History & Culture

The landscape design for the National Museum of African American History and Culture situates the NMAAHC within the context of the Washington Monument Grounds as an object in a field, drawing the open, pastoral nature of the Washington Monument grounds through the Museum site.

Nashville Centennial Park
Master Plan

GGN led a multi-disciplinary planning team to formulate the long-range plan for Nashville's central park -- Centennial Park. GGN's master plan acknowledges past and future simultaneously, respecting the important tradition of Centennial Park while transforming the park into an active place for future generations; a model of sustainable ecological practice; and a destination experience of Nashville's horticultural excellence.

Maggie Bench
for Landscape Forms

Landscape Forms, North America’s largest manufacturer of site furniture, announces the Maggie Bench and Charlie Table, designs from Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN).

Originally designed by GGN for Chicago’s Millennium Park, the Maggie Bench expresses the form and gesture of the human body with a light stance and a minimum use of materials. Click here for more information about Maggie.

University of Washington Lower Rainier Vista

The Rainier Vista axis is a central component of the University of Washington’s historic campus layout. The Vista was first conceived by the Olmsted Brothers as the central axis for the Alaska Yukon Exposition in the early 1900s, framing a grand view of Mount Rainier. GGN's new design of Lower Rainier Vista extends, clarifies, and finally completes the Vista, reconnecting the isolated Montlake Triangle to the whole of the UW campus.

Vancouver Community Connector

GGN's winning proposal for the Vancouver Community Connector reconnects a severed downtown core that was divided by the I-5 freeway. The design laces multiple, street-scale connections across a landbridge structure that is designed -- in collaboration with Allied Works and Arup -- like a honeycomb, to treat and hold stormwater through filters of native plants and deep soils. The landscape "regrounds" the historic Fort buildings and surrounding city in the native landscape and "wet prairie" ecology of Fort Vancouver.

University of Washington
School of Medicine Phase 2

Situated on the north edge of downtown Seattle, the design strives to create a strong sense of identity for the UW School of Medicine campus while responding to the unique programming needs of a biotech research facility. The integrated landscape components promote a cohesive site experience as one moves through the indoor-outdoor spaces.

Charlie Table
for Landscape Forms

Landscape Forms, North America’s largest manufacturer of site furniture, announces the Maggie Bench and Charlie Table, designs from Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN).

Originally designed by GGN for Chicago’s Millennium Park, the Charlie Table re-imagines the traditional picnic table as a fluid and ergonomic piece of furniture. Charlie's open ends provide integrated wheelchair access. Click here for more information about Charlie.