December 20, 2011 - Huei-Ming Juang and Rebecca Fuchs, designers at GGN, created a paper-cut collage for this year's holiday greeting. Image is of the boardwalks that GGN designed for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation campus. You can see a larger version of this image here.

December 15, 2011 – Gustafson Guthrie Nichol & Davis Brody Bond team has been selected to advance to Stage III of the National Design Competition for Union Square. GGN and Davis Brody Bond will lead the team that includes Robinson & Associates, Space Syntax, Tillotson Design Associates, CMS Collaborative, Magnusson Klemencic Associates, WSP Flack + Kurtz, Robert Silman Associates, Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, Poulin + Morris, Gorove/Slade Associates, and Faithful+Gould. The team’s Design Concept for Union Square will be presented to the public in April, 2012.

December 9, 2011 - Jacob Slevin of the Huffington Post interviews GGN and ARO about receiving the National Design Award, in this particular year and economic context. Read the full article here.

December 3, 2011 - Shannon Nichol served on the Advisory Committee for this exciting new competition, to re-imagine a 9-acre site at Seattle Center. A "missing link" between several downtown neighborhoods, the site is framed by the Space Needle and Experience Music Project, the Seattle Opera House, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Campus. GGN will not be participating in this competition. Download the full brief at this link.

November 23, 2011 - In the second half of 2011, a talented group has been added to GGN: Kara Weaver, Jessie Calder, Rebecca Fuchs, Huei-Ming Juang, Liz Martini, Yuichiro Tsutsumi, and Emily Ang. 

November 17, 2011 - Perkins + Will received the 2011 AIA Northwest & Pacific Region Merit Award this week for the University of Washington, School of Medicine Phase 2 project in Seattle. GGN, led by Jennifer Guthrie, were landscape architects on this multi-phased, urban bio-tech campus in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. The mid-block walkways and pedestrian alleys create informal gathering spaces. 

November 8, 2011 - An article in today's Seattle Times, "Seattle Firm Finalist to Redo Part of National Mall," features GGN as being shortlisted for the Union Square portion of the National Mall Design Competition. The article also covers GGN's receipt of the 2011 National Design Award in landscape architecture.

November 1, 2011 - Just published, Charlotte Frieze’s “Private Paradise: Contemporary American Gardens,” features a nice selection of residential landscapes including one designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol. For more information about the book, click here.

October 26, 2011 - GGN's team has been shortlisted, with five other teams, for stage two of the National Mall Design Competition for Union Square. Union Square, the competition site that GGN opted to pursue, is the portion of the National Mall that fronts the U.S. Capitol Building. GGN is teamed with AEDAS, architects.

October 21, 2011 - GGN has been shortlisted for Phase 2 of Chicago's Pierscape at Navy Pier Design Competition. The Phase 2 shortlist of 11 teams was selected from a total of 52 teams that had submitted qualifications. The GGN team includes collaborators Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Pentagram, and Tillotson Design Associates.   

October  7,  2011 -  During Cooper-Hewitt's National Design Week, October 15-23, come see GGN and other National Design Awards recipients at the NDA Winners’ Panel on Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 7:00–8:30 p.m. 

The winners of the 2011 National Design Awards will share their insights at this special panel discussion.

Location: The Altman Building, 135 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011

October 6, 2011 - Today it was announced that The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation campus has been awarded LEED-NC Platinum certification from the United States Green Building Council – making it the largest, non-profit LEED-NC Platinum facility in the world. NBBJ were the building architects and prime consultant.

The campus landscape by GGN integrates pools of captured rainwater and a milliion-gallon stormwater cistern below the central plaza, which captures runoff from paved surfaces for use in the landscape and in the buildings. Native and edible plants dominate the landscape, along with salavaged scrap stone cobbles and other domestically-sourced materials.

September 26, 2011 - You can now follow GGN's news, projects, activities, and people by liking our Facebook page. We hope to see you -- and hear from you -- there!

September 20, 2011 - The Foster + Partners addition to the historic Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, including a new arrival landscape by GGN, has received a Preservation Achievement Award. Rodrigo Abela, GGN Principal, will attend the awards event on October 6th, in Boston.

September 9, 2011 – Partners Kathryn Gustafson, Jennifer Guthrie and Shannon Nichol will be attending several events in Washington D.C. in conjunction with receiving the Cooper-Hewitt, 2011 National Design Award in Landscape Architecture. On Tuesday, September 13th, they will attend a White House luncheon hosted by the honorary patron of this year's award, First Lady Michelle Obama. They will also participate in the Teen Design Fair where high school students will meet one-on-one with design award winners and finalists in the Kogod Courtyard.

August 15, 2011 - Kathryn Gustafson will be participating in The Cultural Landscape Foundation’sSecond Wave of Modernism conference at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on November 18, 2011. Kathryn will be speaking as part of the “Metropolitan Transformations” panel.  More information can be found on TCLF’s website here.

August 1, 2011 - GGN Principal Bernie Alonzo will be speaking at this year’s Green Gardening IPM Conference. The Conference will take place on Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at South Seattle Community College and is sponsored by the City of Seattle’s Green Gardening Program. Bernie will be participating in a section on moving toward sustainable landscapes and will speak specifically on “Designing Sustainable Landscapes from the Ground-Up in an Urban Context.” 

July 21, 2011 - In honor of the grand opening of the Seattle Sheraton Garden Walk the City of Seattle has proclaimed that July 21, 2011 is Seattle Garden Walk Day.

July 9th, 2011 - Shannon Nichol's design for the landscape of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Campus (Phase 1) is featured in today's edition of Pacific Magazine, published by the Seattle Times. Valerie Easton writes about Shannon's unusual and strategic planting designs, which feature many Seattle natives, used in bold masses and mixes. The plantings were designed to support the locally-rooted work of the Foundation employees, in concert with the architecture by NBBJ, prime consultant on the project. 

July 1, 2011 - Writer Michael Watts, in The Economist's Summer 2011 issue of Intelligent Life, profiled Kathryn Gustafson in "The Sky is Mine." (Click link to read.)
"....Gustafson is the grande dame of modern landscape architecture. She intends that her remit as a landscape architect begins the moment you leave your home or office; it’s anything under the sun, urban or rural. Town planning, climate change, archaeology, civil engineering, geological history and local myths are all in the job description...." 

June 23, 2011 - Kathryn Gustafson will be lecturing at the Denver Botanic Garden on July 7th. Her lecture is sponsored by Denver Women In Design. More information can be found here.

June 13, 2011 - GGN is pleased to announce the promotions of several individuals to senior staff. Bernie Alonzo has been promoted to Principal. In addition, Brian Bishop, Austin McInerny, Anne Morris, and Emily Scott have been promoted to Associates.

May 26, 2011 – GGN has won the 2011 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Landscape Architecture. First launched at the White House in 2000, the National Design Awards promote excellence and innovation in design. GGN and other award recipients will be honored at a gala in New York City on October 20th. This year’s jury of design leaders and educators convened by Cooper-Hewitt reviewed the nominations and chose Lifetime Achievement and Design Mind recipients and selected winners and finalists in the Corporate and Institutional Achievement, Architecture Design, Communication Design, Fashion Design, Interaction Design, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, and Product Design categories. More information on all the winners can be found on the National Design Awards website.

May 12, 2011 - The new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Campus was featured in a special section in today's Daily Journal of Commerce. The section features an article about Gustafson Guthrie Nichol's landscape design, written by GGN Partner Shannon Nichol. The section can be found here.

The Foundation will be hosting a Neighborhood Welcome event on Saturday, June 4th.

May 9, 2011 - On May 18th, GGN Associate Bernie Alonzo will guest lecture for the University of Washington Extension School's Implementing Low Impact Development for Civil Engineers course. Bernie's lecture is entitled "Implementing LID: Green Roof Detailing Considerations."

April 12, 2011 - It was recently announced that North End Parks has won an Honor Award from the Boston Society of Landscape Architects. The awards ceremony will take place on April 28. A full list of winners and more information on the awards ceremony can be found here.

April 4, 2011 - GGN is pleased to announce the beginning of construction of the CityCenterDC development by Hines|Archstone in downtown Washington, DC. A new mixed-use development located on the 10-acre site of the former convention center, CityCenterDC is one of the largest downtown development projects currently underway in any U.S. city. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol participated in developing the master plan for the site with lead architect Foster + Partners, and acted as lead landscape architect. Construction commenced on March 23, 2011 and is expected to reach completion by the fourth quarter of 2013. The CityCenterDC website can be found here.

March 14, 2011 - GGN's new line of furniture with Landscape Forms was featured in today's Daily Journal of Commerce. The article by Lynn Porter, "GGN and Olson Kundig get into the furniture business," includes excerpts from interviews with GGN principal Rodrigo Abela as well as designers from several Seattle-area architecture firms that have designed furniture and objects. To see the article, please click here.

February 24, 2011 - GGN is proud to be a co-sponsor of the Next Eco-City symposium on April 7th & 8th. This important event is offered to the public by the University of Washington's Landscape Architecture Department at the College of Built Environments. Next Eco-City's speakers hail from around the world.

Next Eco-City is an interdisciplinary symposium that critically explores the relationships between environment, equity, economy, and design in our rapidly urbanizing world and investigates the dynamics and implications of rapid urban growth in the emerging mega-cities of the global south. For more information, go to this site:http://larch.be.washington.edu/ecocity/
Next Eco-City is an interdisciplinary symposium that critically explores the relationships between environment, equity, economy, and design in our rapidly urbanizing world and investigates the dynamics and implications of rapid urban growth in the emerging mega-cities of the global south. For more information, go to this site:http://larch.be.washington.edu/ecocity/

February 18, 2011 - The terraces, grand stairs, and other features of GGN's Seattle City Hall Plaza are featured in the flagship match of JumpCity: Seattle, a parkour series that is airing on the sports cable channel, G4. City Hall Plaza serves as the main course in Episode 1 of G4's JumpCity: Seattle series. The entire episode can be downloaded on iTunes.