dlandstudio

dlandstudio is an interdisciplinary design firm founded in 2005 by Susannah C. Drake. Prior to starting an independent practice, Susannah worked for architects and landscape architects in New York, Cape Cod, New Hampshire, Wyoming, and San Francisco. Exposure to diverse ecosystems, population densities, and scales of operation enriched her vision of what makes places truly special. The firm provides an integrated approach to planning, programming, and design. As leader and collaborator on large consultant teams that include architects, artists, landscape architects, planners, and engineers, dlandstudio helps enrich team consideration of expressions of landscape meaning while maintaining focus on project goals throughout the development process. The firm is committed to creating projects with a strong conceptual basis drawn from an understanding of the place, the client, the program, and appropriate construction techniques. Our goal is to create beautifully designed, ecologically intelligent, and well-executed projects that work well at the large scale and are executed in rigorous detail. Since its establishment in 2005, dlandstudio has grown both nationally and internationally. The firm’s recent public projects include “A New Urban Ground” designed in collaboration with Architectural Research Office for the Museum of Modern Art’s Rising Currents Exhibit, the Gowanus Canal Sponge Park™, a public open space system designed to absorb and remediate urban storm water, the Scupper Sponge project a bioremediation cell to collect and direct stormwater from a highway scuppers, BQGREEN: Reviving South Williamsburg a project developing strategies to add more open space and mitigate the noise and air pollution of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the Brooklyn Bridge Pop-up Park, a temporary waterfront open space that attracted almost two hundred thousand visitors over six weeks of operation in 2008, and the security for the New York City Police Department headquarters in lower Manhattan. dlandstudio’s current international work includes the site master planning, storm water management, and landscape design for the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls outside of Lilongwe, Malawi, and the masterplan of a new 1200 acre resort complex and public park in Abuja, Nigeria. The firm’s Brooklyn Queens Expressway trench study and Gowanus Canal Sponge Park™ project are the recipients of numerous awards including recent recognition by the American Institute of Architecture and American Society of Landscape Architects. dlandstudio is a State and City certified WBE.