At STOSS, we design landscapes and social spaces that foster resiliency, vitality, social equity, environmental health, and community. By breathing new life into abandoned, neglected, or simply timeworn places, informed and intentional design can bring neighborhoods, institutions, and entire cities to value safer, healthier, and more beautiful public spaces, to be inspired and sense renewed pride and hope in their community.
Since the studio’s founding in 2001, we have worked on tough and complicated sites, from flooding waterfronts, to underserved neighborhoods, deserted downtowns, or neglected brownfields. Whether designing a complex coastal resiliency master plan or an urban pocket park, we ground our design in research, and seek to transform people’s experiences with new or hybrid applications for technologies, infrastructures and ecologies. Through deep research and robust public engagement about the historical context and culture of each site, we create public spaces that resonate uniquely with their public and their place, which encourages new use and attentive care. This approach embeds in the design a conscious effort to bridge gaps in social and environmental equity.
We imagine new possibilities, creating value and beauty in challenging places while never losing sight of how we can inspire social connection and bolster diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Our efforts have garnered numerous awards from our peers and the public including a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award and the Topos International Landscape Award. STOSS has also published three monographs that express our philosophy about the responsibility of design in cities today.
Find out more about STOSS at their website https://www.stoss.net/