DJC.COM -- Landscape Northwest 2004 -- Surveys

EDAW

Management: Jill Sterrett, managing principal; Sandy Fischer, head of the Seattle design studio; Chuck Everett, director of operations
Specialty: Landscape architecture and environmental planning and design
Year founded: 1938 (Seattle office opened in 1982)
Current projects: Monorail; Tollgate Farm; various projects in China and Hong Kong; Rosario Resort; East Campus of Washington state Capitol; comprehensive plans for the cities of Covington and Lakewood; re-licensing of a hydroelectric plant in Oroville, Calif.

The Seattle office of EDAW has been experiencing a renaissance.

Photo by David Lloyd/EDAW

EDAW designed Mission Creek Park in San Francisco. When it was finished last summer, it was the first public park in the 300-acre Mission Bay development by Catellus Urban Development.

The office, which has grown from 30 to 40 employees in the last two years, needed more space so it moved about a year ago. About the same time, Sandy Fischer joined the firm to head its landscape design studio.

“We feel like a new office,” said Michael Cannon, a senior associate of the firm that emphasizes collaboration, public involvement, cultural sensitivity and understanding of history.

EDAW, a global company, has been busy in China, and that has affected the Seattle office. Cannon has traveled there about a dozen times, and about half of the Seattle office’s landscape design studio team is dedicated to work there.

Cannon
Cannon

Closer to home, the firm has its sights set on Seattle’s plan to redesign its waterfront. EDAW is on a team that has come up with some concepts.

“It’s one of those legacy projects,” Cannon said, adding it will result in a lot of work for a lot of companies. “We would like to be a part of it.”

EDAW’s also on one of the two monorail teams vying to design, build and operate the line from Ballard to West Seattle.

“We are a big firm that collaborates with other firms,” Cannon said.

He added the office expects to get busier as it pulls in work from around the country and goes after smaller, more traditional landscape architecture projects.