OvS Receives 2011 LongHouse Landscape Award

The LongHouse Reserve Garden Committee awarded Oehme, van Sweden & Associates the 2011 LongHouse Landscape Award on Saturday, September 17th at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, NY. The award, given for the first time ever to a firm or group, celebrates the “powerful changes that OvS has consistently and continuously brought to the American landscape for the past five decades.” Prior recipients of the award include landscape architect Dan Kiley, American gardener and horticulturist Frank Cabot, and the founder of the Central Park Conservancy, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers.

L-R: Eric Groft, Wolfgang Oehme, Sheila Brady, Jack Lenor Larsen & Lisa Delplace

Following tours of private gardens in East Hampton, a dinner at the home of Alex and Carole Rosenberg in Water Mill and a luncheon at LongHouse, OvS Principals Sheila Brady, Lisa Delplace, Eric Groft and Founding Partner Wolfgang Oehme accepted the award on behalf of the entire OvS team.

OvS Principal Eric Groft

As part of the afternoon’s events, guests enjoyed a panel discussion between Oehme, van Sweden clients Kris Jarantoski, Executive Vice President and Director of the Chicago Botanic Garden and Todd Forrest, Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections at the New York Botanical Garden. The panel was moderated by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, President of the Foundation for Landscape Studies, and previous winner of the LongHouse Landscape Award.

L-R: Kris Jarantoski, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, and Todd Forrest

LongHouse Reserve exemplifies living with art in all forms. It’s collections, gardens, sculpture and programs reflect world cultures and inspire a creative life.

LongHouse brings together art and nature, and aesthetics and spirit, with a strong conviction that the arts are central to living wholly and creatively. Dedicated to quality and integrity, LongHouse programs encourage a broad concept of learning.

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They’re Here!

Any of our followers who have been keeping an eye on Oehme van Sweden lately know that our latest book, The Artful Garden: Creative Inspiration for Landscape Design, will be coming out on February 1^st of 2011.

This afternoon, we were welcomed with a nice surprise. UPS stopped by with a box of eight, brand new, never-been-paged-through copies of The Artful Garden.

We. Are. Thrilled.

Not only do we get the tactile and olfactory experience of our new book (The gloss of the pages! The heft of the binding! The smell of fresh ink!), we are able to experience just how this book will illuminate any gardener’s path to inspired design and creation of a perfect garden from the reader’s point-of-view.

James van Sweden will teach you to think not in terms of borders and beds or even paths and meadows, but of a tapestry woven from sky, trees, rocks, vines, flowers, grasses, and space — all the while providing the practical tools and tips you need to turn this inspiration into reality. 

And the release is just three weeks away…

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James van Sweden Awarded 2010 ASLA Design Medal

Oehme, van Sweden and Associates is pleased to announce that James van Sweden has been selected as the 2010 Design Medal Winner by the American Society of Landsape Architects (ASLA).

Mr. van Sweden was presented with the award at the ASLA President’s Dinner on September 13, 2010 in Washington, DC. The award recognizes an individual landscape architect who has produced a body of exceptional design work at a sustained level for a period of at least ten years.

Additionally, James van Sweden is the focus of an oral history presented by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, the only non-profit American foundation dedicated to increasing the public’s awareness and understanding of the importance and irreplaceable legacy of its cultural landscapes.

To see a glimpse into an enduring design philosophy, click here.

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James van Sweden on the Federal Reserve Building

As part of its What’s Out There Weekend on September 25-26 in Washington, DC, The Cultural Landscape Foundation has produced a wonderful online oral history featuring Oehme van Sweden founder James van Sweden discussing the work he and partner Wolfgang Oehme did on the Federal Reserve Board garden in Washington, DC.

http://www.youtube.com/v/DhgUr3kAYXI?version=3

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Annual Quail Hill Farm Dinner

Last weekend, OvS principal Eric Groft attended the Quail Hill Farm’s annual benefit dinner with Oehme van Sweden client Barbara Slifka.

Above (L to R): Rebeccah Chapman with the Peconic Land Trust, OvS client Barbara Slifka and Ovs Principal Eric Groft.

The table was set for 175 organic farmers, wine makers, artists, brokers, and the one and only, Mr. Alec Baldwin!

The dinner and its communal table benefitted the Peconic Land Trust. The Peconic Land Trust is a nonprofit organization that was established to ensure the protection of Long Island’s working farms, natural lands, and heritages.

Quail Hill Farm is a Rockefeller Farm. It is one of the original CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms in the U.S. and is located in Amagansett, New York, on the South Fork of Long Island, on land donated to the Peconic Land Trust by Deborah Ann Light.

The food that was served at the dinner was all organic and locally grown and prepared by New York’s BEST chefs!

Can you spot Mr. Baldwin in this photo?

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United Therapeutics Project Wins US Green Building Council Award of Excellence

Oehme, van Sweden is proud to announce that the National Capital Region Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council has selected Schick Goldstein Architect’s United Therapeutics project in Silver Spring, Maryland as the recipient of its 2010 Award of Excellence for new Building Design and Construction. Oehme, van Sweden was part of the Schick Goldstein team for this project to design an international headquarters for the biotechnology company United Therapeutics. The project, awarded LEED Gold status in April 2010, features extensive green roof terraces accessible from many of the offices, workstations and conference rooms.

Announcement of the award was made at the NCR Chapter’s “A Midsummer Night’s Green” event on July 28, 2010 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The USGBC NCR chapter developed the Awards program in order to recognize outstanding accomplishments in sustainable design and construction, to honor USGBC member firms that have adopted “green” practices into their mission, and to celebrate individuals who have advanced sustainability in the chapter’s region. The award recipients were selected by a distinguished panel of leaders from the national capital region in various fields in the sustainable design community and development industry.

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