Peter Chmiel, director at Bath-based international landscape architecture practice Grant Associates, has been appointed as one of just six new Fellow members nationally to the Landscape Institute.
Fellowship of the Landscape Institute is the highest form of Chartered membership and is awarded to the foremost innovators, leaders and ambassadors across the landscape architecture profession.
It recognises the top experts in landscape as well as those who have made a special contribution to the development and promotion of the profession.
The Landscape Institute described its six newest Fellows as ‘leaders and innovators in the field’.
At Grant Associates Peter, pictured, leads teams on a wide range of UK and international projects, with a keen interest in the promotion of design quality and technical innovation through the synergy of landscape, architecture, nature, community and place.
He is actively involved in research and environmental design and has led a number of award-winning residential developments, educational schemes, cultural and heritage projects incorporating exemplary placemaking and green infrastructure strategies.
Last year alongside Grant Associates’ Chin-Jung Chen, pictured, he was awarded the Gold Medal and Best in Show at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for the firm’s Guangzhou Garden, pictured below, which explored how our future sustainable ‘landscape cities’ can balance the needs of people and wildlife, based on the Chinese city’s approach to environmental planning and the concept of ‘ecological civilisation’.
Peter, who has worked at Grant Associates for 25 years, said: “I am thrilled and delighted to be invited to join the College of Fellows of the Landscape Institute and to now have the opportunity to collaborate with such a distinguished group of LI members.
“I look forward to both utilising and building on my 35 years’ work experience to help promote, support and inform the core values of the Institute.
“I shall use this Fellowship to continue to promote the vital role that landscape architecture can play for all life on the planet and demonstrate how, via creative collaboration across all environmental disciplines, we can have a positive impact and mitigate the modern twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.”
Grant Associates, which also has an office in Singapore – where it helped create the city-state’s spectacular Gardens by the Bay – has also worked on major projects in the Far East, Australia and the UK, including supporting Bath’s Forest of Imagination community arts event. It also won the Best Show Garden at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show.
