Marion Pressley FASLA (2004)
Fifty Years: Landscape Design and Academic Practice Marion Pressley, FASLA
Back to WID Award of Excellence recipients.
Biography
Pressley Associates is a professional landscape architecture consulting firm established in 1977 by William Pressley, FASLA. Located in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, but operating nationally, Pressley Associates prides itself as a responsive and creative team organized to meet our clients' landscape architecture, planning, and preservation needs.
Full Biography
Marion Pressley FASLA
President/ Principal, Pressley Associates, Inc.
Women in Design Award of Excellence, 2004 winner
Marion’s career has had a dual focus—professional landscape architectural practice and teaching of landscape architecture both undergraduate and graduate—which allowed her to continuingly broaden her knowledge of both disciplines while helping to build the next generation of landscape architects through courses at Rhode Island School of Design, the Radcliff Seminars, the Landscape Institute of the Arnold Arboretum, and the Boston Architectural College.
Marion’s professional practice has also had a dual focus—Marion is recognized nationally for her historic preservation projects across many public and private venues, and is one of only a few professionals in the nation to achieve national award recognition in both historic preservation and contemporary design projects.
Two significant examples of Marion’s cultural landscape projects—Brookline’s Emerald Necklace parks and Pittsburgh’s Point State Park—have been central to the development of Marion’s “reality-based” preservation principles for cultural landscapes. Marion is adamant about the need to preserve the historical legacies of our historic and cultural landscapes while also designing, and maintaining, places relevant to today’s users. Change is inevitable, even as we attempt to respect history”. (Samuel Parsons. 1915)
Two significant examples of Marion’s contemporary landscape projects—Piers Park East Boston, MA for Massport, and Pope John Paul II Park Lower Neponset District for DCR Boston, MA—have been central to the development of Marion’s design principles for contemporary public landscapes both are brownfields projects, both having important ecological components including issues of global warming, and both included major community participation during programming and design.
