The award-winning nationally significant New York City-based landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg, a maverick known for his innovative adventure playgrounds created at City Housing Authority projects in the 1960s in partnership with the Astor Foundation, most famously for Carver Houses and Jacob Riis Plaza, founder of the landscape architecture program at City College of New York (which became a national model, especially for recruiting women and minorities), a champion of cities, and designer of two influential works that were threatened with demolition and about which there was extensive coverage – Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis, MN, and Pershing Park in Washington, D.C. – passed away in New York City on Saturday, February 15, 2025, at the age of 93.
Other projects in NYC include the Winter Garden at Battery Park City, Roberto Clemente State Park, East 67th Street Playground; Pershing Park, Fort Lincoln Park, and The Yards, Washington, D.C.; Peavey Plaza and Loring Greenway, Minneapolis, MN; and many other projects in the U.S., Canada, India, Israel, and Japan.
“He was serious about the idea of child’s play and an unrepentant believer in the virtue of cities when U.S. cities were at their nadir. He worked mostly in the public realm, which meant that everyone was his client; he knew he was responsible both to them and for them. That challenge and joy of creating places for people, and the energy that people brought to public places, continually motivated Friedberg over a career that lasted more than six decades.”
Charles A. Birnbaum – The Cultural Landscape Foundation
His is survived by his wife Dorit Shahar and their daughter, Maya, and two sons, Mark and Jeffrey, from his marriage to his first wife, Esther, who passed away in 1982. Friedberg and Shahar have a residence on the Upper West Side and in The Springs, East Hampton.
His firm M. Paul Friedberg & Partners is now known as MPFP and the principal is Rick Parisi.
Learn more about the legacy of M. Paul Friedburg at https://www.tclf.org/m-paul-friedberg-biography