EDUCATION

Master of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MA

Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI

FEATURED PROJECTS

165 Capitol Avenue | 200 Fifth Avenue | Blackstone Heritage Corridor Visitor Center | Court Square Press | East Dareen Beach Neighborhood Park | Macallen Building | Mangrove Museum Mountain to Sea Ecological Corridor | Solitaire Tower | Theater Group Retreat | Zelkova Urban Garden

Founding Principal, Design Director

Michael Blier, FASLA, RLA, Hon BSA

Michael Blier is a registered landscape architect and founding principal of the critically recognized design group Landworks Studio, located in Salem, Massachusetts, with a satellite office in Taipei, Taiwan.

Michael’s recent work is largely urban and site-specific in nature. It seeks to exploit the inherent complexities that exist between ecologically challenged sites, environmental and cultural sustainability, material tectonics, and program. Exploring these complexities results in highly performative, experientially, and visually compelling solutions to a broad set of conditions that confront the re-urbanization of disturbed land. 

Michael has been teaching studios and visiting as a critic at the Rhode Island School of Design since 1991 as a means of engaging and expanding the discipline of landscape architecture and to test the processes by which it is conceived. He also lead design studios and taught representation courses at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and Cornell University.

He has lectured extensively throughout the United States at universities including the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University, Penn State University, Rhode Island School of Design, University of Colorado in Fort Collins, The Taubman School at the University of Michigan, Louisiana State University, The University of Illinois C/U, and Harvard University.

SELECT AWARDS

AIA Honor Award, Blackstone Heritage Corridor Visitor Center, 2023
Greater Bay Area Urban Design Awards, Grand Award for Plan/Concept, Mangrove Museum Mountain to Bay Ecological Corridor, 2022
BLSA Honor Award, Blackstone Heritage Corridor Visitor Center, 2022
BSLA Merit Award, 165 Capitol Avenue, 2022
BSLA Merit Award, MIT Site 4 Roof Terraces, 2022
ASLA-CT Merit Award, 165 Capitol Avenue, 2022
BSLA Merit Award, Solitaire Tower, 2020
Inducted into ASLA Fellows, 2017
BSLA Honor Award, Zelkova Urban Garden, 2016 BSLA Merit Award, 1st and M Apts, 2016
ASLA Honor Award, 200 5th Ave. 2012
BSLA Honor Award, 200 5th Ave., 2012
BSLA Merit Award, Vertical Slice Garden, 2012
Boston Society of Architects Honorary Membership, 2010