Edmund Hollander


Edmund David Hollander is an American landscape architect and educator. The New York City native is president of Hollander Design Landscape Architects, a New York-based firm incorporating environmental planning, landscape design and horticulture which has provided services for residential, commercial and public projects. Hollander has taught extensively at the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania and at City College of New York. The cornerstone of Hollander's landscape practice is his theory of The Three Ecologies: Ecology of site, Human Ecology, and the Ecology of Architecture. As Hollander wrote in the introduction to his most recent book The Good Garden: “A powerful landscape unfolds like a story. Your land is your home and within your home is the house."

Life and career development

Early Years and Education

Edmund Hollander was born on September 3, 1954 in New York City and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His mother, Jean Kopelman, was a television producer in New York. His father, Alvin L. Hollander Jr., was an executive at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia. He attended Vassar College from 1972-1976 and received a bachelor's degree in history and botany, then studied ecology and horticulture for three years at the New York Botanical Gardens School of Professional Horticulture. In 1983 he earned in his master's degree in landscape architecture with a focus on ecology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Design Influences

At Penn, he studied with Ian McHarg, the Glasgow-born urban planner and ecologist, whose book Design with Nature revolutionized the way landscape architects can shape the land. McHarg taught his students to look at each site as a cross-section of layers: topography, soils, geology, climate. In the studio, they practiced his “layer cake” technique of overlapping transparent sheets of Mylar, each with a schematic of hydrology, soil, and areas of forest, marshland or fragile dunes.
Other masters of design who taught at Penn, including Arthur Edwin Bye and Laurie Olin, challenged the Penn graduate students to consider every aspect of how people live in a particular place and to think about design holistically considering a site's cultural history and its place in the community, along with the site's built elements.

Personal

Hollander was married to Wendy Powers on June 20, 1992, at the Piping Rock Beach Club; the couple has a daughter, Renata. They own Freddy, a rescued schnoodle. They live in Sag Harbor and New York City.

Career

After graduating from Penn, Hollander first worked at the Delta Group in Philadelphia, then was recruited by the firm of Clarke & Rapuano in New York City. There he worked on commissions such as the Westway Waterfront Park on Manhattan's West Side and a new ecologically based corporate headquarters for Merck Pharmaceuticals. Simultaneously, he was developing his residential design practice with Penn classmate Maryanne Connelly.

Hollander Design Landscape Architects

In 1991 Hollander founded Hollander Design Landscape Architects with Connelly. Hollander Design has offices in New York, Chicago and Sag Harbor, N.Y., and a staff of 25 environmental planners, landscape architects and horticulturists. The firm has created hundreds of landscapes, both public and private, around the world, and usually manages about 30 projects at any one time. The company's portfolio concentrates on the greater New York area including a number of summer homes on Long Island's East End as well as a roster of New York City urban multi-family dwellings.

Design Approach

Hollander believes each landscape can be analyzed by studying its three ecologies: The site's natural ecology, including topography, soil and climate; the architectural ecology of the house as it will appear in the future, along with related structures; and its human ecology, meaning the many ways in which people will use the property.
“The three ecologies essential to a timeless project,” he explained to Architectural Digest, “are the architectural ecology of the buildings, the natural ecology of the vernacular landscape, and the human ecology of how the clients will inhabit the landscapes we create.”
He consults with the architect involved in designing a new home or remodeling an existing structures, as well as the homeowner and family, "envisioning their lifestyle and finding out what’s already there that they love." When designing a landscape, Hollander focuses on what plants and trees are appropriate for the land, favoring native species and those that will survive in the existing soils. However, he also knows that landscaping are living things, and plans for those changes to come.
Hollander, writes J. Michael Welton in Ocean Home magazine, "views his profession's commitment to every landscape as akin to the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. He seeks to work with the natural ecology of a site, the human ecology of his client and the architectural ecology of the building."

Teaching career

Hollander has taught at the City College of New York and in the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, where he serves on the Dean's Council and has frequently lectured.

Professional Associations

Public, Non-profit or Government

Washington, D.C.

New Jersey

[American Society of Landscape Architects], Honor Award

Honor Award

Hollander and Hollander Design have provided services pro bono to numerous projects and causes.
He is a member of the board of trustees of the New York Restoration Project, which was founded Bette Midler and is New York City's only citywide conservancy planting trees and restoring parks for residents in all five boroughs. He serves on the board's real estate and development committees and has provided landscape design services for many NYRP projects.
He has volunteered his services to a number of restoration projects in Sag Harbor, N.Y., which prompted the Sag Harbor Partnership to award him in 2017 its Annual Community Service Award. These activities include:

Books