Gardens by the Bay – Grant Associates | Image Credit Robert Such
The RSA has announced the Royal Designers for Industry awards that began as a means by which to enhance the status of designers today remains the highest accolade for designers in the UK and is conferred to those who have shown sustained design excellence, work of aesthetic value and significant benefit to society. Andrew Grant, founder and director of Bath-based Grant Associates and Dan Pearson, Principal of Dan Pearson Studio are only the second and third British landscape architects to receive the award since it was introduced in 1936. The first was Kim Wilkie in 2009.
Andrew Grant, is to be recognised for his pioneering global work in sustainable and ecological landscape architecture by becoming a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). Andrew’s expertise has been influential; shifting the landscape design industry from flowering borders to a major force in the public realm. His early work established a holistic approach to systems thinking at an ecological scale. Andrew has developed a global reputation for a range of extraordinarily innovative work such as the acclaimed Gardens by the Bay attraction in Singapore which opened this year.
Tokachi Millennium Forest – Dan Pearson Studio | Image Credit Syogo Oizumi
Dan Pearson is one of the UK’s most respected landscape and garden designers who has an international reputation for design and planting excellence. Dan began his professional career as a garden and landscape designer in 1987, and was one of the earliest contemporary practitioners of naturalistic perennial planting in the UK. In his landscapes and parks at The Millenium Dome, Tokachi Millenium Forest and Handyside Park he has helped to educate the public about conservation, botany, sustainability and environmentalism.
