Urban Landscapes: Design
Strategies, Implementation, and Management

The Dune Brothers Garden, Living Edge, and Ship Street Garden, are recent urban landscape projects by the Landscape Architecture office Design Under Sky, led by Landscape Architect Adam E. Anderson. Each project presents a unique strategy in their initiation, constructability, site challenges and their response to urban and natural forces in the city. In this site tour, we will explore these projects and highlight interesting moments in the process and development, as well as new discoveries since their conception. The tour will start at the Living Edge, then follow to the Dune Brothers Garden, and end at the Ship Street Garden.

Free! RSVP NEEDED!

Adam E. Anderson, RLA, LEED AP | Founder/Principal

Adam E. Anderson is a registered Landscape Architect and Founder/Principal of Design Under Sky. His twenty years of experience have included hospital healing gardens, residential gardens, master-planning, campus plazas, rooftop gardens, and urban parks, as well as commissioned public art works.

His recent works — 10,000 Suns, The Living Edge, and the Roger Williams Park Gateway—have received critical acclaim at the local and national level and have contributed to the transformation of the urban landscape of Providence.

His work negotiates with the ever-changing landscape by understanding the unique phenomenological qualities and cultural influences inherent in a site and then deploying interventions to embrace, reveal and often embellish these qualities. “Nature” is abstracted in his projects, culminating in a celebration of wonder found in both the technological and ecological. He continues to maintain several of his projects in the city, viewing maintenance as a “sculptural act” and redefining the role of “weeds” as a collaborative partner in re-wilding spaces in the city.

He received his Masters in Landscape Architecture (MLA II) from the Rhode Island School of Design where he was an Olmsted Scholar and Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from The Ohio State University. He has taught at RISD in the Graduate Landscape Architect Department since 2014 and currently also at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2021 he was inducted into the DESIGNXRI Hall of Fame as an emerging designer. Adam also serves on the board of the Downtown Providence Parks Network as well as PVD World Music Organization.

He is a licensed Landscape Architect in RI, MA, CT, NY, and PA

Teaching
Since 2014, Adam has taught numerous courses at the Rhode Island School of Design in the Masters of Landscape Architecture program. Critical discourse in the academic setting spurs creativity in the professional world and builds strong connections with students that later go on to work with our studio. In addition to RISD, he currently teaches Core III Studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and in the Summer of 2023 was invited to teach at the Le Gout Workshop in Richelieu, France.