2004 ASLA Design Medal

M. Paul Friedberg, FASLA

The ASLA Design Medal 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.

A native New Yorker, Mr. Friedberg founded M. Paul Friedberg and Partners, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, in 1958. His visionary designs have been recognized with 85 national and international awards from a diverse array of organizations, ranging from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to the French Ministry of Culture. With Mr. Friedberg’s landmark design of Riis Plaza on the lower East Side of New York, the landscape model for low-income housing was permanently altered. No longer were lawns fenced off and inaccessible to the people living in the community. Some of his best known designs include: Pershing Park in Washington, DC; Peavy Plaza, the major central space for the city of Minneapolis; and the Olympic Plaza, in Calgary, Canada. In recent years, Mr. Friedberg has collaborated on such well-known projects as Battery Park City World Financial Plaza, the first waterfront urban plaza in New York City; the Fulton County Government Center in Atlanta, Georgia; Transpotomac Canal Center in Alexandria, Virginia; among others.

Read the nomination letter by Leonard J. Hopper, FASLA, past president of ASLA

Return to 2004 Medals & Landscape Architecture Firm Award page.