26 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE CEOS: WE WILL BE A ZERO-EMISSIONS PROFESSION BY 2040, WORLD MUST ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE
“We as a species can no longer stand on the sidelines. It is the responsibility of every human to commit to some form of CLIMATE ACTION. As designers of our environment, OLIN is actively working toward a more resilient planet and enthusiastically endorses ALSA’s Climate Action Plan.”
Lucinda R. Sanders, Ed.D., FASLA
CEO and President of OLIN
OLIN’s Lucinda Sanders joined a group of 26 CEOs representing the world’s largest and most influential landscape architecture firms released a public letter committing their firms to achieve the goals laid out in the American Society of Landscape Architects Climate Action Plan, most notably a commitment to make landscape architecture a zero-emissions profession by 2040. The firms signing onto the letter have designed many of the most-visited parks, public plazas, stadium grounds, waterfronts, and transportation corridors across the United States and around the world, representing tens of billions of dollars of public and private infrastructure.
The letter reads in part: “Because we work so closely with land and water, landscape architects are natural leaders in designing climate-resilient communities—from stormwater management to green infrastructure to sustainable transportation to biodiversity conservation. Every day, we design nature-based solutions to help build communities that are more resilient to extreme weather, more equitable for everyone, and more supportive of human health and wellness.”
The letter expresses key business commitments: “We publicly and expressly endorse, support, and commit to the goals articulated in the American Society of Landscape Architects Climate Action Plan, which sets specific and extraordinarily ambitious goals for the profession of landscape architecture to become a zero-emission profession by 2040, including in our business operations, designed landscapes, and the materials and products used in our work.”
The businesses represented on the letter collectively do more than $350 million in revenues annually and lead or contribute to projects with more than $1 billion in construction value annually. Their work influences millions of acres in more than 50 countries every year.
“Leaders of more than two dozen top-tier firms that influence billions of dollars in infrastructure spending and millions of acres of land have just pledged to make their profession zero emissions by 2040—this is a really big deal,” said American Society of Landscape Architects CEO Torey Carter-Conneen. “These are people who have the skills and imagination to make it happen: They're already designing resilient waterfronts, parks that soak up stormwater, and urban forests that take greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere and cool our cities. Landscape architects know how to get it done. Every sector of the economy has to tackle climate resilience, and landscape architects will do their part.”
The CEOs called on governments, clients, and peers in the closing section of the letter, writing in part: “We call on our colleagues in allied disciplines to partner with us in designing and implementing solutions. We call on leaders in government at every level to prioritize resilience, emissions reductions, and human wellbeing in their policymaking. We call on our clients to be bold and curious as we design the future together.”
OLIN is a design studio comprised of an enthusiastic team of landscape architects, planners, urban designers, and collaborators, based in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Our work is predicated on developing innovative and tailored approaches to social engagement, environmental and social responsibility and justice, and financial and operational sustainability in the context of awe-inspiring and beautiful designs built with finesse and craft. Our award-winning projects cross boundaries of scale, typology, and site condition, yet are all driven by our central vision: To Create Places That Enhance Life. Furthering our deep belief in enhancing biodiversity and utilizing nature-based solutions, OLIN has made a commitment to address carbon reduction and climate action through our operations, practice, and advocacy. This ethos is embodied in OLIN’s leadership and advocacy in the field, advancing new tools for carbon calculation, developing and sourcing more sustainable materials, and translating learning directly into our practice.
We understand the need to constantly deepen our understanding of the complexities of our work, which we do through OLIN Labs. As a conduit between academia and practice, OLIN Labs recognizes the value of open dialogue and knowledge sharing among individuals with different expertise and methods but with common purpose.
Starting in 2023, OLIN Labs hosted programming aligned with global Climate Week, consisting of internal discussions with allied professionals advancing climate justice, biodiversity, the carbon economy, and sustainable materials. These conversations highlight synergies between fellow practitioners, academics, and researchers who are united in creating better solutions for planning and design that prioritize planetary survival; we aspire to accomplish this by reducing energy consumption, restoring and enhancing natural systems, building community resilience, conserving resources, fostering widespread economic prosperity, and improving quality of life outcomes, with the goal of inciting action and a collective future vision.
Connecting ideas to action, OLIN Labs declared 2024 to be the Year of Climate Action. Labs is incubating multiple initiatives that are advancing discrete climate themes, from communication, to metrics, to sustainable specifications.
