Starr Whitehouse is pleased to announce that Hoboken Southwest Park has been recognized as an inaugural winner in the first annual One Water Award. Designed by Starr Whitehouse with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, cost estimators, and allied professionals, the 1.25-acre Southwest Park features a resilient core of stormwater detention systems tucked into a high-performance urban space that is rapidly becoming known as New Jersey’s first resiliency park.

StuyTown held a ribbon cutting for the new Fitness Playground designed by Starr Whitehouse Tuesday, August 1. As reported in Town & Village, the redesign of Playground 7 is part of an ambitious program by StuyTown to overhaul all of its playgrounds within the next five years. The fitness playground is the first such space to be renovated, combining a running track and obstacle course with state of the art outdoor fitness equipment to create a workout venue catering to all levels of resident abilities. Representatives of StuyTown’s management team inaugurated the 40-yard dash to celebrate the opening.

Starr Whitehouse is thrilled to announce that VIA 57 West has been recognized as a Best In Class winner in Paving & Landscaping for the 2017 Brick in Architecture Awards. Sponsored by the Brick Industry Association, an authority in the brick industry, the Brick in Architecture Awards is the nation’s premiere architectural award to celebrate projects focusing on genuine clay brick. VIA 57 West Garden features a winding brick path through a shady birch forest to a grassy meadow in what advances a radical reinterpretation of the urban courtyard block, animating the residential community with a rich landscape encouraging perambulation and contemplation.

Starr Whitehouse is thrilled to be leading the City’s design teams on two of NYC Parks’ five anchor parks projects—part of Mayor DeBlasio’s effort to create world-class parks within walking distance of over 750,000 New Yorkers in all five boroughs. Starting summer 2017, Starr Whitehouse will work with NYC Parks to rejuvenate historic St. Mary’s Park in the Bronx and to realize the City’s innovative vision for an environmentally-friendly, high-performing and immersive experience of nature at Freshkills Park on Staten Island.

Starr Whitehouse is honored to be leading NYC Parks’ consultant team on the Harlem Greenway Link project, an upcoming study to complete the Manhattan Greenway between 125^th and 132^nd Street. Scheduled to start this summer, the study will focus planning efforts on a new 11-acre waterfront park to connect Harlem River Park to the East River Esplanade.

Starr Whitehouse is proud to announce the completion of a six-year collaboration with BIG Architects and the Durst Organization on the courtyard at VIA 57 West. Bringing three local ecologies deep into the heart of this new “courtscraper,” the courtyard is now open to residents and will host four tours during this year’s Open House New York weekend.

Hoboken breaks ground on Southwest Park, the culmination of Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s and the community’s efforts since 2007. Starting in 2013, Starr Whitehouse held community workshops, built consensus on the park program, developed conceptual plans, prepared grant applications, and led an interdisciplinary team to realize the full design. The park provides welcoming social spaces with permeable pavements, rain gardens and subsurface detention that contain a 10-year storm. The director of the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust, the main funder of the park, called the park “really cutting edge…a model in an urban area of how to do things correctly.”

Starr Whitehouse is thrilled to announce that Bushwick Inlet Park, our collaboration with Kiss + Cathcart Architects, has been selected for ArchDaily’s Top 100 U.S. Projects. To celebrate its 10^th year, ArchDaily highlights the 100 most “important and inspiring works of American Architecture” to serve as case study references for professionals and students. Bushwick Inlet Park integrates landscape and architectural design to maximize public space, enhance the neighborhood’s sense of place, and deliver extraordinary environmental performance.

Laura Starr has been elevated to the American Society of Landscape Architects’ prestigious Council of Fellows. Among the highest honors the ASLA bestows on its members, the Fellowship is granted in recognition of Laura’s lasting contribution to the field of Landscape Architecture and to society at large through the quality, innovation, and incredible range of her works. Laura’s lifetime of achievement and the achievements of 36 of her peers will be honored in a ceremony at the ASLA’s Annual Meeting and Expo this year, held in Chicago from November 6th to November 9th.

Starr Whitehouse is thrilled to be the landscape architects on the BIG team’s winning proposal for HUD’s Rebuild By Design competition. The team’s winning entry, dubbed “The Big U,” was awarded $335 million for the implementation of a series of berms to protect the Lower East Side while enhancing the physical, social, and economic resiliency of East River Park and the surrounding neighborhood in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Starr Whitehouse was instrumental in developing an integrated landscape design for Lower Manhattan, weaving together ecological considerations, community needs, urban design, and resiliency measures. As leaders of the team’s outreach efforts, Starr Whitehouse assembled many of the key stakeholders in the Big U and planned a series of four community workshops that put design and ideation techniques normally reserved for the studio into the hands of over 150 community members which were critical for building support for the project and creating a responsive design proposal.