Local Office Landscape & Urban Design was founded in 2006 by Harvard Graduate School alumni Walter Meyer. Operating between infrastructure, urbanism, and ecology, the firm has garnered accolades from across the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, public policy, science and art. The partners have been engaged as educators, speakers and visiting critics at Columbia University, Harva
rd University, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Parsons New School, Pratt Institute, City College of New York, the University of Florida, Florida International University, and the University of Puerto Rico. The firm’s recent built work includes the Parque del Litoral, in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, the largest urban park ever constructed in the country. At 2.5 km long, this beachfront park served as the site of the 2010 Central American Games. Local Office’s innovative approach to the site design won the project a distinguished honor award from the American Institute of Architects in Puerto Rico. Along with Ponce architect Javier Bonnin, Local Office created a natural water filtration membrane of dunes and wetlands. Situated at the edge of the city between the mountains and the sea, the entire park functions as a living stormwater treatment facility, restoring the decaying coral reef in the Caribbean Sea by ameliorating the city’s water pollution. The project won the AIA Puerto Rico honor award for urban design, a Cimex award for sustainable infrastructure, and endorsement from the Caribbean Tsunami Institute. After Hurricane Sandy the firm partners started the non-profit ‘Power Rockaways Resilience’ and won the Whitehouse ‘Champions of Change’ Presidential award for fundraising and delivery of free geothermal and solar generators to volunteer centers throughout the coastal Rockaway peninsula in Queens, NY. Currently, Local Office is consulting for the National Parks Service, the City of New York, and the Army Corps of Engineers on coastal resiliency planning in the New York Bight. In September 2010, the firm’s partners were recognized for their ‘leadership and innovation in the green economy’ by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in Washington DC. The New York State Council of the Arts awarded a 2009 Individual Projects in Architecture research grant to Local Office for their work in developing a modular, mobile and immediately-deployable solution to New York City’s combined sewer overflow pollution. In 2008, Local Office received a Merit Award from the New York Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects for the project “Garden between City and Sea,” a realization of the principles of sustainable coastal landscape architecture at a very small scale.
