Terrain Work’s “The Fold Garden” was recently dedicated at the Peoria Riverfront Museum in memory of the late Pat Hagenbuch, community leader, business owner, and museum member. The bespoke folded sculptural steel planters and accompanying plantings were designed by Terrain Work and fabricated by Philippi-Hagenbuch, Inc. as a gift from her daughter and son-in-law, Danette and Josh Swank. The new garden transforms the previously unused plaza into an outdoor gallery and event space for future museum visitors to enjoy. To learn more about the “Fold Garden” click here.
Theodore Hoerr Presents at University of Arkansas Trail Mix Symposium
Theodore Hoerr, Founding Principal of Terrain Work, was recently invited to speak at University of Arkansas a part of the “Trail Mix" sustainable trails symposium. “Trail Mix” was an interdisciplinary symposium and workshop dedicated to sustainable mountain bike trail design, on Oct. 3-5, on the U of A campus and nearby trails.
Northwest Arkansas is one of the nation's fastest-growing cycling destinations with a range of world-class trails and a university campus committed to becoming one of the most bike-friendly campuses in the country. The three-day event brought together designers, researchers, cyclists and policymakers to explore the future of trail building and the role of design in shaping outdoor recreation. Participants took part in panel discussions, hands-on workshops and guided rides on some of Northwest Arkansas' most celebrated trails. It was great fun, and a intriguing topic to contemplate how the bicycle can continue to shape our culture and environment into the future!
Hudson Highland Residence Featured in New York Times
Terrain Work's Hudson Highlands Residence featured in The New York Times! The article explores the design process to create this unique residence with our collaborators Jeff Jordan Architects and Dana Sottile!
Located along the picturesque Hudson River with expansive views of the rocky pine-oak-heath summit forest bluff is the Hudson Highlands Residence. The design of the landscape features a gradient of spatial scales that create distinct experiences of intimacy and openness in relation to the river, the forest bluff, and the existing natural elements on site. To learn more about the Hudson Highlands Project click here.
Gravity Field wins American Society of Landscape Architects NY Award
Terrain Work is excited to announce that Gravity Field has won an American Society of Landscape Architects New York Merit award for 2025! We are delighted to receive two awards, including Gravity Field, from a record number of submissions this year!
Gravity Field demonstrates the robust adaptation of plants in the most inhospitable conditions. Plants are extraordinarily adaptive and essential to life. 171 sunflowers are grown upside-down and curve up towards the sun, defying gravity and exhibiting phototropic, gravitropic, and heliotropic properties. While the future is uncertain, Gravity Field sees optimism in the ability of plants, and all organisms, to adapt and thrive in the face of climate change. To learn more about Gravity Field click here.
InterPlay Park wins American Society of Landscape Architects NY Honor Award
Terrain Work is excited to announce that InterPlay Park has won an American Society of Landscape Architects New York Honor award for 2025! We are delighted to receive two awards, including InterPlay Park, from a record number of submissions this year.
InterPlay Park reconnects communities divided by the I-74 Interstate, fostering cross-generational play and community programming in the heart of downtown Peoria, Illinois. The civic space encourages walkability and new investment, while amplifying the community-oriented mission of existing neighborhood non-profits. InterPlay Park creates an opportunity to rectify past panning mistakes and invite the community to shape a park for the future of Peoria. To learn more about InterPlay Park click here.
Terrain Work selected for the Walton Family Foundation's Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program
A selection committee of industry experts and foundation representatives has chosen Terrain Work to be part of the Walton Family Foundation's Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program. “By partnering with visionary architects, landscape architects and urban designers, we aim to support ambitious projects that leave a lasting impact on the region’s future,” said Meredith Bergstrom, senior program officer at the Walton Family Foundation. “The Design Excellence Program is committed to creating welcoming public spaces that reflect local culture and foster a sense of belonging.” To learn more about the Walton Family Foundation's Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program click here.
POP Rocks Featured in Fast Company
POP Rocks is featured in an article published by Fast Company highlighting the creation and success of the pedestrian-centric development in the Mission Rock neighborhood in San Francisco! POP Rocks, a universally accessible public art installation, is one of the street room installations that activates this new public corridor. The mixed use neighborhood was developed through a partnership between the San Francisco Giants, the Port of San Francisco, and developer Tishman Speyer. Read the Fast Company Article here!
Happy 2025 From Terrain Work!
POP Rocks | San Francisco, CA
From all of us at Terrain Work we wish you a Happy New Year in 2025! We look forward to what the new year brings with all of our friends, collaborators, and clients.
The Malt House Landscape: A Community Space in the Making
Image Credit: Architectural League of New York
This summer, our Malt House landscape hosted its first two events, marking the beginning of becoming a vibrant neighborhood public space. Though still under development, the community has already started to enjoy and benefit from this new landscape in West Harlem.
On June 25th, the Architectural League of New York celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of Urban Omnibus, the League’s publication dedicated to observing, understanding, and shaping the city. Terrain Work’s publicly accessible landscapes in West Harlem were featured along with new architectural additions to the neighborhood by Gluck+ and Levin Betts Architects. The event included a tour of the Manhattanville Factory District projects by Janus Properties, concluding with a reception at the newly inaugurated Malt House Courtyard.
The West Harlem Innovation Network also hosted a networking event for industry professionals on July 30th at the Malt House Courtyard. This gathering provided an opportunity for professionals, students, and researchers to connect and build community in West Harlem.
The design for the Malt House landscape, originally part of one of Manhattan’s largest breweries during the late 1800’s, embodies the chemical reactions found in the brewing process by taking individual elements and combining them into something greater than their constituent parts. Salvaged pieces of the old brewery complex such as steel beams, cobblestones, and the remnants of the brewery foundations are reconfigured to become a landscape that reflects the past, while looking forward to a whole new array of activities for the community in the future. It provides a venue for events such as public art displays, musical performance, dancing, outdoor movies, open air markets, community gatherings and a shady spot to gather with friends.
Another more recent phase of the Malt House landscape has taken an existing asphalt parking lot slated for future development and transformed it into West Harlem Going Wild. With a limited budget, this space was creatively transformed using discarded construction materials and spontaneously occurring plants, turning an underutilized lot into a productive landscape for people and wildlife. The events underscored the courtyard's potential as more than just a green space—it serves as a model for future urban development in marginalized urban spaces. As cities worldwide face the challenges of climate change, grass roots projects like West Harlem Going Wild offer a beacon of hope and practicality, fostering resilient and livable urban environments.
Terrain Work Begins Work on Whipple Family Forest Education Center
Terrain Work is delighted to announce we are working on the landscape for the new Whipple Family Forest Education Center at the University of Arkansas’s Garvan Gardens. This project is a collaboration with the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture, led by Dean Peter MacKeith, and the Urban Design Studio, led by Architecture Professor and Department Head John Folan, with Modus Studio Architects.
The Whipple Family Forest Education Center will be a multipurpose structure that places visitors “in the forest” so that they are “of the forest.” Constructed from Arkansas-sourced wood and timber, a mass timber canopy will hover above an open plan providing a series of flexible interior and exterior spaces that will physically demonstrate the value of Arkansas’ forest and timber industries.
The Whipple Center will support participatory exhibitions integrating technology, art and culture as mechanisms for enhanced forest education while reinforcing the mission of Garvan Woodland Gardens as an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. The center will house the permanent Clark Family Exhibition in Timber and Wood, as well as the active public and educational programming for a forest and sustainability institute. We are Happy to be a part of the team for this special project!
West Harlem Going Wild
West Harlem Going Wild transforms a vacant asphalt lot on 128th Street in Manhattan into a planted respite. The design addresses issues that urban environments face in the wake of climate change, such as: reducing the heat island effect, improving air quality, breaking up the urban soil profile to allow for water percolation into the ground, and upcycling materials onsite to reduce waste and emissions associated with the construction industry. Working with limited resources on a shoestring budget, the design utilizes discarded construction materials and plant species that spontaneously occur in the urban environment that have historically been considered “weeds” to form a grass roots solution to these global problems. As a prototype for future urban landscapes, the site will be continuously monitored for species performance and longevity over time.
As we grapple with the deepening climate crisis that threatens humanity, novel and incremental solutions to combat this complex problem are desperately needed. It requires both broad level policy changes from governments as well as grass roots movements from individuals to address the myriad causes of climate change. In this spirit, West Harlem Going Wild was born. West Harlem Going Wild is a model of how underutilized and marginal urban spaces can be adapted to become productive and thriving landscapes with a limited budget. Learn more about West Harlem Going Wild by clicking here.
The Barking Club Miami Revealed!
Terrain work is thrilled to share the design for the Barking Club Miami. The Barking Club, in collaboration with Odd House, provides an oasis on the edge of Miami for dogs and their owners to play, socialize, and create community. The site is currently overwhelmed with Maleleucas, an invasive species that threatens the health and stability of the Everglades ecosystem. Terrain Work’s plan creates a new home for the Barking Club with a long term management strategy that eliminates the Maleleucas and reintroduces a native everglades plant palette to provide shade and habitat for creatures of the everglades and their furry friends. Learn more about the Barking Club Miami here.
Terrain Work Featured in Seoul Biennale
Terrain Work with The New York 8 (Terrain Work, MMK+, Strange Works, Emergent Studio, and Dong-Sei Kim) Productive Han-Ga-Ram is currently being exhibited in the 2023 Seoul Biennale. The proposal was selected through an international competition for ideas to help imagine the future of Seoul for the next 100 years.
Our proposal, Productive Han-Ga-Ram, reimagines the Han River as Seoul's central public space by transforming its thirty bridges and its riverfronts into a collective green network. The existing bridges and the waterfronts will be gradually transformed into a productive and performative public infrastructure. This phased process will bring about a series of pedestrian-oriented platforms and spaces where energy is produced, and air and water are filtered. Productive Han-Ga-Ram amplifies Han River's ecological potential to trigger a series of sociopolitical transformations for Seoul's next 100 years. To learn more about our proposal click here.
Terrain Work Receives Honorable Mention in Incheon Geodam International Competition
Terrain Work’s proposal “An Ecology of Knowledge and Culture” was recently awarded Honorable Mention for the Incheon Geomdan Museum Library Complex Cultural Facility International Design Competition. The proposal, in collaboration with Strange Works Studio and Emergent Studio, was inspired by the Korean landscape spanning from the Mountains to the Sea. The proposed landscape reveals the complex and diverse ecotonal landscapes that exist within the Korean Peninsula. It also mediates between repositories for three distinct forms of information – the library (recorded information), the museum (cultural objects embedded with information), and the landscape (biological information), allowing residents to engage with Incheon Geomdan’s intellectual, historical, and biological history. To learn more about “An Ecology of Knowledge and Culture” click here.
University of Arkansas Garvan Woodland Botanical Gardens Design Underway
Terrain Work is excited to share that we are working with Garvan Woodland Gardens and the University of Arkansas to create a new entry sequence and arrival garden for the acclaimed botanical garden. Garvan Woodland Gardens is a 210 acre botanical garden set on shores of Lake Hamilton located in historic Hot Springs, Arkansas. The garden was originally gifted to the University of Arkansas in 1985 by Verna C. Garvan to highlight the unique flora found in the Ouachita Mountains while serving as a place of learning and cultural enhancement.
Terrain Work’s design for Garvan’s new entry sequence creates a series of interconnected gardens, expanding the garden’s world class collection and serving as a place of arrival, gathering, and recreation for visitors. A wood promenade will connect the entry gardens with the existing botanical collections and architectural features within Garvan. The form of the promenade is borne out of the symbiotic fungal networks that forge ecological connections in the forest. To learn more about this project click here.
Terrain Work Selected to Exhibit in the Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism
Terrain Work with collaborative partners - MMK+, Strange Works Studio, Emergent Studio, and Dongsei Kim, NYIT - were recently selected from an international competition to exhibit in the 2023 Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism : A 100 Year Master Plan. Our proposal, Productive Han-Ga-Ram: Han River as Madang of Culture and Ecology, reimagines the Han River as Seoul’s central public space by transforming its thirty bridges and river front into a productive and performative infrastructure that helps to mitigate the effects of climate change while offering new venues for public recreation. Learn more about the Seoul Biennale here and stay tuned for our proposal in September!
Gravity Field Wins Azure 2023 Award
Terrain Work is honored to receive the Azure Magazine 2023 jury award for the best experiential installation for “Gravity Field”! Drawing over 1,000 submissions from around the world, the 2023 Azure Awards edition represents the best in global architecture and design. Collectively, the diverse range of awarded projects exemplify excellence in innovation, aesthetics, creativity, and social and environmental responsibility.
Gravity Field was one of the international winning entries selected for the Jardins de Metis Garden Festival that has been on display at the garden since 2022. Jardins de Metis is the biggest contemporary garden festival in North America with over 60,000 visitors each year.
“Gravity Field” demonstrates the robust adaptability of plants in even the most extreme conditions. A floating cloud of 171 sunflowers transform during the course of the installation. The sunflowers are initially grown upside-down, but curve up toward the sun defying gravity. To learn more about Gravity Field click here.
Terrain Work Makes West Harlem New Home!
Terrain Work has relocated our office to the historic Mink Building located in West Harlem! Our new neighborhood is the Manhattanville Factory District located near Columbia University, City College, and the 125th Street corridor, Harlem’s most important commercial and cultural zone. We made the move to West Harlem after working the past several years on a series of projects in the neighborhood with Janus Property Group to bring publicly accessible open spaces to the Manhatanville Factory District. We are thrilled to make West Harlem our new home in such a vibrant and culturally rich neighborhood!
VOTE FOR GRAVITY FIELD FOR PEOPLE'S CHOICE 2023 AZ AWARDS BY THIS SUNDAY!
Vote for our public art installation ‘Gravity Field’ for the AZ Awards People’s Choice of 2023!
VOTE FOR GRAVITY FIELD HERE: https://awards.azuremagazine.com/
“Gravity Field” demonstrates the robust adaptability of plants in even the most extreme conditions. A floating cloud of 171 sunflowers transform during the course of the installation. The sunflowers are initially grown upside-down, but curve up toward the sun defying gravity. Visitors are encouraged to visit the installation numerous times throughout the festival to experience how adaptable plants are to their circumstances: phototropically, gravitropically, and heliotropically. Gravity Field is a delightfully immersive artwork and real-time experiment that highlights the powerful resilience of nature. To learn more about Gravity Field click here.
Al Fresco Wins American Society of Landscape Architects NY Award!
Terrain Work is excited to announce that Al Fresco Botanical Garden has won an American Society of Landscape Architects New York award for 2023! Located in Peoria, Illinois, the botanical garden highlights the rich diversity of flora and fauna found in the riparian riverfront ecology of the Illinois River while embracing the site's cultural history as an amusement park in the early 1900s. Al Fresco offers a dynamic and infinitely changing experience for visitors based on the rise and fall of the water level of the Illinois River. Al Fresco presents visitors with “Ecological Amusement” by weaving together the natural and cultural history found on the site while showcasing plants from one of the most ecologically productive habitats found in North America. To learn more about Al Fresco click here.