Conservation Design Forum Competitors

Design Workshop is a 100% employee-owned international design studio spanning the fields of landscape architecture, urban design, planning, economics, environmental graphic design, and engagement. Since the first ‘Workshop’ in 1969, the firm continues to innovate with each generation, informed by changing economic context and the natural systems impacting our communities. A community of designers, architects, planners, researchers, and economists, we share a a deep commitment to design excellence and a holistic approach to creating places that stand the test of time. We design for people - not just today but for future generations. And in the rapidly changing world we live in, achieving a balance of resiliency and stewardship remains central to our work. We call this process DW Legacy Design®. Whether designing a private courtyard and garden, a new community within a fragile ecosystem, or transforming a brownfield site into an Innovation District, we strive to foster connections between people while creating meaningful, distinctive places.

OJB Landscape Architecture focuses on creating landscapes that transform perspectives and evoke emotional responses, creating unique and unforgettable sensory experiences. The firm’s work imaginatively unifies the relationship between landscape and architecture, ensuring unique compositions that satisfy the demands of both form and function. OJB Landscape Architecture has received more than 150 design awards, including the 2020 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture, the American Society of Landscape Architect’s 2015 Firm Award; and four ULI Urban Open Space Awards over the past ten years: The RiverFront in Omaha in 2024, Levy Park in Houston in 2018, Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City in 2015, and Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, in 2014. Founder Jim Burnett was honored with the prestigious ASLA Design Medal, its highest honor, in 2016.

Mission: Restore The Earth And Inspire Ecological Stewardship. Our practice can best be defined as a blend of sound science, place-based design and ecological democracy. It is rooted in deep ecology with an underpinning that all species have equal rights, and that we have an ethical obligation to ensure that our actions do not interfere with their evolutionary potential. It is ingrained with the intent to design with ‘place’ and all of its complexity, diversity and life. And it is infused with a sense of compassion, fairness and equity for all peoples and their communities. Science forms the core of our practice. Science that is as informed by rigorous field investigations and meticulous research as it is from knowing the land and learning its stories. While the science provides us with the facts, stories provide the context to help us see things from a whole-systems perspective. Patterns, connections and relationships continually reveal themselves through stories, providing a rich tapestry of life that forms the basis of our design ethos.