About the Designers
Kathryn Gustafson, Partner
Gustafson Guthrie Nichol
Kathryn Gustafson brings more than 25 years of distinguished international practice to Gustafson Guthrie Nichol. Her award winning landscapes and structures can be found throughout Europe, North America and the Middle East. Her diverse span of prominent works, ranging from one to 500 acres in size, are known as ground-breaking, contemporary designs that incorporate qualities that are fundamental to the human experience of landscape.
Kathryn Gustafson is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architecture and a medalist of the French Academy of Architecture. She is the recipient of the Chrysler Design Award and of London's Jane Drew Prize. She is active in lecturing and her work is widely published. Kathryn's recent work may be found in such projects as the Westergasfabriek Culture Park in Amsterdam, the National Botanic Garden of Wales, the Seattle Civic Center and City Hall Plaza, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain in London, Seattle's McCaw Opera House and The Garden of Forgiveness in Beirut, Lebanon.
Jennifer Guthrie, Partner
Gustafson Guthrie Nichol
A founding partner of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, Jennifer Guthrie brings exceptional experience in large-scale project management, public process, landscape design and construction oversight. Jennifer has a comprehensive project background; her work has included major civic plazas throughout the United States, public parks, educational facilities, hospitals, museums, and military campuses.
Examples of Jennifer's current and recent projects as Managing Partner include the landscape for Renzo Piano's renovation of the Art Institute of Chicago, the landscape for the University of Washington's South Lake Union School of Medicine, and Seattle's three-block Civic Center Plan.
Shannon Nichol, Partner
Gustafson Guthrie Nichol
Shannon Nichol, a founding partner of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, brings a strong background in designing contextually driven, award-winning landscapes in cities throughout North America. Shannon is known for her inspired responses to local history, views and urban topography. Her locally oriented mindset enables her to establish a shared vision between all participants and thoughtfully utilize local knowledge and insights.
Recent examples of Shannon's work as Design Partner may be found in such projects as Boston's North End Parks, the McCaw Hall Opera House in Seattle and the San Ysidro US-Mexico Border Station project. Shannon is active in lecturing and volunteering in several cities and her work is published internationally.
Piet Oudolf
Plantsman and Plant Designer
Piet Oudolf is renowned worldwide for his imaginative garden designs. Most of the plants he uses to furnish those gardens come from the nursery he runs with his wife, Anja, near Arnhem in the Netherlands. There he has assembled a pioneering collection of plants that are dependable, disease-resistant, easy to maintain, and beautiful throughout the year.
Among the gardens Piet has designed are the Dromparken in Enkoping, Sweden; two great borders at the Royal Horticultural Society Gardens at Wisley; and private gardens in various countries. The garden he designed with Arne Maynard for the Chelsea 2000 Flower Show won the Best Garden Award. In 2002, he was asked to design the Gardens of Remembrance at The Battery, New York.
Robert Israel
Set and Costume Designer
An elected fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, Robert Israel has created environments for many of the world's great opera companies. For the 1996 world premiere of Catan's Florencia en el Amazonas at the Houston Grand Opera, Israel created the sets which were later seen at Los Angeles and Seattle. Other theater and opera companies he has worked with include the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna Staatsoper, Paris Opera, Bavarian State Opera and English National Opera. His costume drawings for Glass' Satyagraha are part of the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.
Recent productions include Berg's Lulu in Japan, Britten's Peter Grimes in Zurich, and, at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2006, Israel will design a new production of Verdi's Macbeth for Seattle Opera.
Edward K. Uhlir
Executive Director, Millennium Park Incorporated
Ed Uhlir was appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley as design director of the Millennium Park Project after a 25 year distinguished career at the Chicago Park District. He was responsible for the final master plan for Millennium Park, served as the master architect and developed and managed the competition for the Lurie Garden. Uhlir now serves as executive director of the not-for-profit Millennium Park Incorporated.
Ed is an architect and a graduate of the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the Chicago Chapter presented him with their Distinguished Service Award. Millennium Park and Ed Uhlir have received more than 40 awards, including the Barrier Free America Award, presented to him by the Paralyzed Veterans of America.
He is a board member of the Washington D.C.-based City Parks Alliance, a board member and secretary of NeighborSpace, a member of the State of Illinois Public Art Advisory Committee and a member of Mayor Daley’s Parks and Open Space Committee. Uhlir is a recognized authority on park development, has lectured to a wide variety of audiences and is the author of “Ark in the Park, The Story of Lincoln Park Zoo.”
Terry Guen, FASLA
Millennium Park Master Landscape Architect, Terry Guen Design Associates
Terry Guen is Principal and Founder of Chicago-based Terry Guen Design Associates. As Millennium Park Master Landscape Architect, she was responsible for the design and implementation of Millennium Park’s entire 25 acre landscape. Working with Gustafson Guthrie Nichol as the Lurie Garden’s local landscape architect, she worked with contractors to implement the design, including procurement of plants, and layout of Piet Oudolf’s perennial plant display.
Terry is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and currently serves as Chair of the City of Chicago Mayor’s Public Open Space Committee. While her twenty five year career spans complex ecological planning, design, and construction of public urban landscapes in the Midwest and East Coast US, locally she has been designer of many favorite Chicago public spaces. Aside from her practice, Terry teaches in the Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology, and resides with her three sons in Oak Park, Illinois.
Jennifer Davit
Director, Head Horticulturist
Jennifer Davit, formerly of the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Miami, Fla., has been named director and head horticulturist for the Lurie Garden in Chicago’s Millennium Park, effective March 15.
Davit has more than 12 years of horticulture experience in private and public gardens. She has a master’s in public garden management from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. She has held internships at the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas, Calif., the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kauai, Hawaii, the United States National Arboretum and Brookside Gardens in Washington, D.C., and the Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden in Fort Bragg, Calif.
Davit served as Conservatory and Special Projects Manager at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden from 2003-2008. Her work there included managing the 16,000-square-foot conservatory and Victoria amazonica pool, creating and delivering educational programs for people of all ages, and developing written and oral interpretation for horticultural exhibits. While at Fairchild, she bloomed the renowned corpse flower, scientifically known as Amorphophallus titanium, twice and participated in a plant collecting expedition to Jamaica’s Cockpit Country which resulted in the discovery of 2 new plant species. She also has managed the Ward Garden, a 4.5 acre residential garden in Coral Gables, Fla. and served as a horticultural consultant to landscape architects in Miami, Fla., and created botanical art for public and private installations.
