Landscape Architect Signe Nielsen To Share the Story Behind Little Island’s Design

In 2021, Little Island opened as an oasis for New Yorkers, with more than 2 acres of landscape, architecture and sweeping views marrying in this unique space within Hudson River Park.

At the heart of its creation was Signe Nielsen.

The landscape architect and urban designer will visit the Bridgehampton Community House on Sunday at 2 p.m. for a Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons talk about Little Island and its design process — from the park’s dynamic topography that minimizes environmental impacts to its diverse planting selection, which includes 35 species of trees.

The landscape design was conceived as a leaf floating on water — a space for every season that could be both inspiring and surprising for New York City. It is the brainchild of London-based Heatherwick Studio and New York-based landscape architecture firm MNLA, which is led by Nielsen.

She has been practicing as a landscape architect and urban designer in New York since 1978, creating a body of work that has renewed the environmental integrity and transformed the quality of spaces for those who live, work and play in the urban realm.

“Nielsen believes in using design as a vehicle for advocacy to promote discourse on social equity and community resilience,” according to the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons, “and has served on multiple panels to effect positive change.”

A fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Nielsen is the recipient of more than 100 national and local design awards for public open space projects, and is published extensively in national and international publications. She is a professor of urban design and landscape architecture at Pratt Institute in both the graduate and undergraduate programs within the School of Architecture, and is the former president of the Public Design Commission of the City of New York.

For more information, visit hahgarden.org.