Tom Leader Studio

de Princeton Architectural Press Staff

Tom Leader Studio, a collaborative and experimental design office formed in 2001, is among the most exciting new voices in landscape architecture today. Wit, humor, and experimentation play an important role in the studio's work, which seeks a balance between speculative designs and built works. The sixth addition to the acclaimed Source Books in Landscape Architecture series, Tom Leader Studio features three of the firm's most compelling projects--the Pool Pavilion Forest, a collaboration with artist James Turrell and architect Jim Jennings in Napa Valley; the studio's competition entry for Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee; and the Railroad Reservation Park, a twenty-one-acre central park in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, currently under construction. Each project is described and documented in detail through drawings, photographs, and plans. Informative conversations between Jason Kentner and Tom Leader give insight into the firm's working process, and a foreword by Philippe Coignet of the Office of Landscape Morphology as well as an essay by Linda Jewell, chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design, situate Tom Leader Studio's work in the context of contemporary landscape practice. Source Books in Landscape Architecture are a result of the Herb and DeeDee Glimcher Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University. Designed as a series of discussion-based seminars, the program invites noted designers to present their work in a three-part framework: influences and process, important works, and a focus on a single project or series that serves as the subject for a Source Book monograph. The Glimcher professorship and publications offer direct access to leading voices in the profession and promote critical inquiry in contemporary designed landscapes by examining intentionality and results of selected works. --Book Jacket.