About
Hinterlands designs biodiverse urban landscapes for a changing climate.
Founded in Chicago in 2015 by Conor O’Shea (PLA, ASLA), Hinterlands is at the vanguard of contemporary landscape architecture.
Hinterlands has experience designing at a range of project sizes, from the urban storefront pollinator planter to the suburban residential garden to the large public park. Across all these scales, we place special emphasis on supporting insects and pollinators by using native plant mixes, integrating healthy soils, and recommending insect-friendly landscape maintenance practices. Every project is informed by deep ecological background research and we work closely with trusted landscape contractors to bring our designs to life.
However, we’re more than an ecological design company: we’re in the business of envisioning radical new landscape futures. As the climate changes and culture evolves, so too must our landscapes, to both reflect and inform society’s values. Through our unique design process and collaborations with like-minded clients, Hinterlands is weaving a new cultural and ecological fabric for 21st century landscapes.
The Biodiversity Crisis
Globally, insect populations are crashing and climate change is altering bird migration and insect emergence times as well as the bloom times of the plants they feed on and, in turn, pollinate.
How we choreograph these seasonal rhythms–or phenology–are a core consideration in the work at Hinterlands.
We are committed to transforming urban landscapes so that it is easier for insects and other small animals to eat, move around, and reproduce. We also make sure that non-migratory species can survive the winter by recommending landscape maintenance practices that keep leaf litter and native plants in place throughout the winter, providing a protective home for species.
Through all of our work, we are providing more stepping stones and corridors for insects and animals to move across built landscapes, particularly urban and suburban landscapes of the midwest that have been engineered for anthropocentric uses. We’re reweaving natural systems back into the built environment and producing a new urban fabric that is wilder, more visually striking, and more biodiverse.
Design Process
We are first and foremost designers. That is, we invent and oversee the construction of landscapes of remarkable aesthetic quality, that support native insects and other forms of wildlife, that withstand the unpredictable temperature and rainfall fluctuations of climate change, that dramatically shift in color, texture, and form throughout the seasons, and grow richer over the years.
In every project, Hinterlands aspires to a thorough understanding of place through repeated on-site observation, aerial drone photography, a close reading of current and archival local journalism, and in-depth ecological background research. This research is synthesized and represented in compelling, information-rich, and easy to read graphics such as large-scale GIS maps, seasonal bloom charts, and ecological food web diagrams. Once our landscapes are built, we like to visit them as often as we can, to document their evolution, to edit them when needed, and learn from them.
Further, to support our commitment to building exceptional cutting-edge works of landscape architecture, we continuously revise and update our design process by integrating emerging software and hardware such as 3D modeling software, parametric scripting, virtual reality, mixed reality, drone photography, real-time archviz software, and 3D printing.
Collaboration and Communication
Hinterlands collaborates closely with clients to deliver visually bold, biodiverse, low maintenance landscapes. We are responsive, respectful, and communicate with clients through in-person meetings, graphically-rich presentations, physical models, 3D model fly throughs, as well as pre-recorded and professionally-edited client presentations for asynchronous viewing.
In addition to working for private and public clients, Hinterlands also participates in self initiated, pro bono, and scholarly activities. While these intellectual, scholarly, and civic engagement activities are important in their own right, they also prepare us to make more informed decisions in our for-profit design work.
Recognition and Exhibits
Since Conor O’Shea started the company in 2015, Hinterlands has been written about in high profile publications including Architectural Record, Atlantic CityLab, Landscape Architecture Magazine, MAS Context Journal, WIRED, The Chicago Tribune, and Topos: The International Review of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design; our work has been exhibited at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Chicago Architecture Center, and the Venice Biennale.
People
Conor O'Shea | Founder
Conor O’Shea believes that transforming the aesthetics and ecological health of the public realm—from expressway embankments to neighborhood parks to suburban streetscapes to rural interstate medians—requires daring landscape architecture that infuses urbanism with natural systems.
By choosing Hinterlands as a name for his practice, a term that refers to peripheral areas of a city, Conor affirms his commitment to a holistic view of the urban environment: one that prioritizes areas and networks beyond city centers, places that increasingly constitute the bulk of the everyday public realm.
In 2015, the practice’s first commission was an exhibit at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, an event that attracted over 500,000 visitors. The proposal, Logistical Ecologies, the sole exhibit in the biennial by a landscape architecture practice, envisions a radical new model of a freight-based urbanism where housing and commercial development are clustered around intermodal freight facilities, all set within a land use system that restores agricultural soil health by temporarily converting it into prairie using prescribed burning and bison reintroduction. For Atlantic City Lab, design journalist Zach Mortice writes that “[t]he model could be a radical change from the assumed cul-de-sac and strip mall lifestyle—something like an eco-friendly cross between a truck-stop and a suburban town center, with less familiar aesthetics.”
Recently, the firm’s proposal for the Springdale Veterans Memorial Design competition won first place. According to Peter MacKeith, Dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas and chair of the competition jury, the proposal “is persuasively evocative of an appropriate atmosphere for the vision of the memorial and convincing in the completeness of its design thinking. This is design at its best, one that does not dictate or demand, but invites and inspires.”
Conor also engages with local communities through pro-bono design projects. Recently, he collaborated with Mather High School on the Mather Celebration Garden in Chicago. This courtyard garden was conceived and installed through a collaborative and interdisciplinary process with students, teachers, and staff. In Urbana-Champaign, he collaborated with Chicago Design Office to provide services for FirstFollowers, including design software workshops for organization members, concept design charrettes, and concept drawings for a new community center.
He is an active speaker and regularly serves as a critic at design schools in the United States and abroad. Conor was recently invited to discuss his work in the video “Wildlife-Friendly Urban Planning & Design,” produced by the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute, and continues to advocate for wildlife-friendly urban design.
Professional Registration
Registered Landscape Architect, State of Illinois, License No. 157.001724
Education
Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Master in Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Master in Design Studies (Urbanism, Landscape, and Ecology), Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Previous Work Experience
Designer and Project Manager, Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, Chicago, IL
E-mail: ceoshea@hinterlands-ul.net