A practicing landscape architect for over 25 years, Charles Anderson has crafted award-winning projects recognized for integrating art, nature, and community needs. As Founder and Principal of Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture, his evolving body of work focuses on the transformative processes of ecological systems. His work has drawn critical acclaim from a diverse group of independent critics and design juries not only for its efficacy in achieving broader environmental or civic goals, but also for its formal elegance and inspired use of materials. His large-scale public works, including the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, the International Peace Garden of Manitoba/North Dakota, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in Alaska, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in Washington, and Arthur Ross Terrace in Manhattan, have poetically revealed astronomical phenomena, the erosive shifting of tides, the ephemeral qualities of light, and the subtle traits of plant communities that signal diversity, resiliency and, at times, devastation.

Anderson’s early works were instrumental in stimulating regional and national interest in sustainability, native plants, and urban ecology at a time when those terms were still relatively unknown. His local projects have restored native habitats, cleansed toxic soils, and introduced regenerative native planting schemes to degraded sites. Many of his projects have served as learning and teaching environments as he has enthusiastically volunteered his time and talent encouraging others to become active advocates for landscape change in the Pacific Northwest. He firmly believes that although multidisciplinary design collaboration can be an extremely difficult process, it is a necessary one.

Artist Statement: Building on my use of the tablet PC as a design tool, a select collection of favorite images by local photographers, Andrew Buchanan and Bruce Moore, are arranged to tell a story of “The Gardens of the Olympic Sculpture Park.” Joining the photos are a series of drawings produced by my office for the various design phases over three years and a much earlier sketch from my notebook of the overall landscape design from 2002. The park has received almost every prestigious design award in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and engineering, yet the gardens themselves are often overlooked, mainly because the landscape architect was denied a voice. Since its very beginning, the museum and the lead designer refused to acknowledge the design collaboration that really occurred between the architect and the landscape architect. In 2007 I asked that my name be formally removed from the project and resigned as landscape architect. As painful as that decision was, I remain convinced that I had no other choice. The images represent the ephemeral beauty of an ever-changing landscape and setting for sculpture that illustrates the role of “nature” as the soul for the park.