Terrain Work is an international landscape architecture, urban design, and public art studio in New York City that is known for its creativity and design innovation. Terrain Work’s landscapes and urban strategies consider how landscape’s innate ability to change create new emergent forms and experiences that synthesize culture, nature, and the built environment. We approach each project with a curiosity and collaborative spirit born out of the belief that landscapes should perform as both cultural provocateur and ecological system.
We Think Design Should Perform
The built environment should perform as both art and environmental systems. Cultural symbols created through design become more meaningful when they take on ecological functions such as improving water and air quality, providing new habitats for flora and fauna, and combating urban heat island effects. Our work engages current cultural and environmental conditions in innovative ways mixing nature with the man-made to ensure people and their environments thrive.
We Build communities
Apart from the basic needs essential to sustain human life – light, air, water, and food – it has been empirically proven that people of all ages and ethnicities thrive when they are part of a community. Our approach to design provides vital opportunities for people to interact with each other and their surrounding environment.
We Love plants
Over the last few decades plants have often been reduced to "green infrastructure," limiting them to largely ecological functions. These issues are undoubtedly important, but they can cast plants as more of an instrumental tool rather than an artful muse. We believe pants have the potential to create culture, shape space, and provide atmospheric effects to provoke new and unexpected experiences in the built environment.
We Ask Questions
Our approach is not driven by preconceived stylistic or aesthetic agendas. Instead, we ask questions to help frame key issues that are central to our client and the project. As we move through the design process with the client we continually test and evaluate these questions to generate an approach that is specific to the site and client’s program.
We Foster Collaborations
We enjoy cultivating collaborations with other designers, engineers, ecologists, artists, and most importantly our clients. The work of a team is often more interesting and effective than any one person. Each collaboration we encounter enriches the work we do and the ideas that drive the design process.
We Welcome Difference
We embrace the fundamental idea that we all choose to live differently. Whether urban, exurban, suburban, town, country, or wilderness, landscape is uniquely equipped in its ability to traverse this set of disparate terrains. We embrace new challenges that help us see our practice and the world from a different point of view discovering possibilities that we could not arrive at on our own.
We Deliver Projects
We are equally capable generating conceptual ideas as well as having the skills to turn these ideas into tangible projects. We have a deep knowledge and extensive track record of managing complex projects around the world with an array of stakeholders and community engagement. We approach each stage of the project to deliver a project that is on schedule and within the desired budget.
Clients & Collaborators
An.onymous Architects
Bradley University
Cosentini Associates
Cove Property Group
DeSimone Consulting Engineers
Ennead Architects
Fisher Brothers
Gary Rossard Architects
Gensler
Green View Companies
Grimshaw Architects
Hamilton Park Conservancy
Hines
Jeff Jordan Architects
KPF Architects
NYC DOT
Pavarini McGovern | Structure Tone
Studio T-Square
University of Miami
Valley Oak Partners
Vidaris
Wheels O’ Time Museum
WSP Consultants