About West 8

West 8 is an award-winning international office for bespoke urban design, landscape architecture and infrastructure projects, founded in 1987 with offices in New York, The Netherlands and Belgium. West 8 has an extensive portfolio of urban master plans and designs, landscape interventions, waterfront projects, parks, squares and gardens. The firm also develops concepts and visions for large-scale planning issues.

Imagining extraordinary new landscapes in the midst of complex contexts has been a hallmark of West 8’s design philosophy from the very beginning. We have learned that every community, every project, and every potential is different, and that design responses must be crafted for the particulars of place.

Second Nature

Each project is approached in two simultaneous – but characteristically Dutch – ways. Firstly, we take a classic civil engineering approach – a logic based on utility and necessity. Secondly, we believe in identity-led production of landscape – we respect the location, context or envisioned nature of the site. Together, this method envisions a new nature, a ‘second nature’ of constructed landscapes that simultaneously responds to pragmatic demands (water management, population growth, traffic congestion) and, through identity, symbols, and expression, also reinforces the existing culture to which the intervention belongs.

Sustainability

From the day West 8 was founded, sustainability has been at the forefront of the firms work as. We believe that the integration of honest and expressed sustainable measures are paramount to engage users. We use this belief to visually aid the overall design outcome and, ideally to actively create new ecologies. We ask what approaches are relevant to achieve an individual project’s sustainable goals.

Community Engagement

West 8 has built up a stellar reputation for respectful and thoughtful engagement processes with the communities we work with as we value collaboration and the mix of ideas. Our culture establishes lasting credibility and trust, where all parties use listening and learning as a common language and design tool. Moreover, we believe in creating outstanding visuals for captivating communication and, because of this, West 8 integrates graphic design at every stage of the project. We produce all graphics in-house by artists who continuously improve their skills in the art of visual storytelling.

Collective

Today, the office employs a hundred designers, including architects, urban designers, landscape architects, industrial engineers and artists, from eighteen countries on six continents. The large diversity in age, talents and cultural backgrounds of the team makes the office function as a collective, and has proven to be of inestimable value to remain at the international forefront of design.