Doug Hoerr designs landscapes that are deeply harmonious with their contexts and reflect his interest in creating spaces of mystery and discovery, story and sequence. His work consistently brings careful attention to the experience of a landscape throughout all four seasons, focusing on the skeleton of the landscape to establish a structure of pattern, form, and texture that is dynamic even in the bleakest months.
Among his significant projects are the Michigan Avenue streetscape along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, The Tiffany Celebration Garden adjacent to Chicago’s Buckingham Fountain, and the award-winning campus transformation at North Park University. His vision for urban corridors extends to many municipalities in the Midwest, including steady influence in Des Moines, IA, where Doug designed a compelling streetscape linking its downtown to its airport. In many of these projects, Doug’s designs attracted design awards as well as economic investment in public private partnerships, benefiting the municipalities in which they are located.
Doug Hoerr stands out as a leader in the greening of the City of Chicago. As chairman of Mayor Daley’s Green Roof Committee, he remains one of the strongest proponents of the greenroof movement in Chicago and the Midwest, and regularly draws on his expert plant material knowledge and technical knowledge of green roof systems in his private practice.
As a landscape architect of note, Hoerr has been featured in His noteworthy influence in residential landscape architecture evolves from the design of more than 500 private gardens in the Midwest, New England, Southeast and West Coast. For over a decade, this body of work has been recognized with design awards and regularly featured in national publications such as Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, House & Garden, Veranda, Garden Design, and Traditional Home. Many of these residences are designed by leading contemporary and historic architects, including David Adler, Howard Van Doren Shaw, Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Robert A. M. Stern, and Peter Gluck.
Doug is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a Distinguished Alum of Purdue University, from which he earned his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture in 1979. During a two-year sabbatical to study horticulture and garden design in England, he worked alongside three of Britain’s most respected garden designers and helped construct the 1988 Chelsea Garden Show gold-medal winning display. Doug has been an Illinois registered landscape architect since 1993, and from 1990 – 2008, was principal of Douglas Hoerr Landscape Architecture, Inc.