.webp?language=en-US)
November 12, 1962 – October 9, 2025
Christopher Fannin, ASLA International Member, died on October 9th, 2025, in Abu Dhabi where he was the Managing Director of InSite | KEO. Chris’s thirty-five-year practice as a landscape architect was shaped by his early life in Concord, MA. as much as his education. The son of parents who still run an architectural preservation practice, he studied Art History and Africana Studies at Cornell University (BA 1995). His fascination with the materiality and meaning of the designed landscape drew on his broad liberal arts education and lead him to studies at RISD (BFA 1989)) and Harvard Graduate School of Design (MLA 1995).
Chris was equally devoted to the creation of public spaces and the participation in public spaces. A natural athlete, Chris experienced public spaces intensely through skateboarding, cycling and running as well as languidly while people watching or lingering over a drink with friends. Experiences working for Hargreaves Associates in San Francisco in the early 1990s, and MVVA in Cambridge in the mid 1990s, were heady times. On the design teams that reclaimed post-industrial sites like Byxbee Park created resilient parks like Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh, Chris gained valuable experiences that shaped his professional career as a design educator and creative practitioner. While an Assistant Professor at Florida International University, Chris invited Elizabeth Meyer to lecture and attend his seminar. Meyer invited Chris to join the University of Virginia (UVA) as Visiting Faculty the next semester.
In Charlottesville, Chris met his British wife-to-be; the two of them moved to London and married in 2000, where Chris joined HOK as a Senior Associate. Four years later, they returned to Charlottesville where they welcomed their beloved twins. Chris joined Julie Bargmann as DIRT Studio’s Managing Partner for a few memorable years when the firm was designing the URBN Outfitters Headquarters grounds at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, a brownfield site, out of their studio in the renovated Silk Factory in Charlottesville. During this time, Chris participated in speculative design competitions such as the History Channel’s City of the Future with UVA School of Architecture colleagues Nataly Gattegno and Jason Johnson (Future Cities Lab principals), Kristina Hill and William Morrish. Their entry for Washington, Grow:DC-Harvest the City, explored how distributed hybrid and adaptive ecological technologies could generate solar energy and produce food from formerly polluted rising tides.
Chris returned to HOK in St Louis in 2008. His relationship with HOK would eventually span over a decade and three cities—from London to St. Louis to Hong Kong and back to London. Chris worked on important city plans, sustainable infrastructure plans and public spaces in Asia and England, including the Tamar Park in Central Hong Kong (recipient of an IFLA Asia-Pacific Region “Outstanding Cultural and Urban Landscape Award”), Hammad Airport in Doha (the largest landscape project designed and delivered in Revit), and the Lavasa Hill Station, a sustainable hill town in India. He served as the Senior Vice President for Planning and on the HOK Board of Directors and Managing Board.
In 2018, Chris was offered the Senior Principal and Managing Directorship of InSite International, a multi-disciplinary planning and landscape design practice in Abu Dhabi and six other cities. During what would become the final chapter of his professional career, Chris continued his professional service as a juror for the WLA Professional Awards (2021) and was profiled for the cover story” Walking the Talk” in Construction Week (October 2024). Upon hearing news of Chris’ death, InSite, an allied practice of KEO, wrote the following:
“Chris was a design leader of intellect, conviction and uncommon humanity. His passion for creating meaningful places, where design elevates how people live and connect defined his life. He believed deeply in collaboration, mentorship, and the responsibility designers hold toward the planet and the communities they serve. His career spanned decades and continents, yet it was within InSite that his quiet leadership and generosity of spirit left their most enduring mark.”
A memorial service for Chris, held at the Harvard Faculty Club on what would have been his 63rd birthday. Those in attendance included his bereaved family and friends, including childhood friends, college chums, and professional colleagues from around the globe. They honored his desire to connect people to one another, to places and to the planet through design. Chris wanted to make a difference, and he did so through collaborative creativity. Chris made work fun.