Inside the LA Studio—Coen+Partners - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/non-HSW)

Shane Coen has led the innovative landscape architecture studio Coen+Partners for over 30 years. Grounded in an approach of contextual driven design, Coen+Partners collaborates with the world’s leading and emerging global design architects, artists, and engineers to create site solutions that are rooted in place while embracing programmatic social and ecological goals with innovation and beauty. Shane serves the GSA Design Excellence Program on their National Registry of Peer Professionals and is the Recipient of the 2015 Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award in Landscape Architecture.

McKenzie employs a multidisciplinary approach to design, using methods of mapping, recording, and uncovering so that a landscape’s true potential can be articulated and amplified. She enjoys collaborating with other designers to enhance natural site assets, steward resources, and celebrate cultural connections. This approach draws upon related disciplines and the communities in which she works to create unique landscapes that reflect the users’ ethos. Advocacy, equity, and the advancement of the profession drive her past involvement on the Board of Directors for the Landscape Architecture Foundation and the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University.

Laura is a senior landscape architect at Coen+Partners, where she leads the office’s integration of BIM to manage the design and documentation of complex urban projects across the world. She maintains a focus on human interactions with space and place, believing that successful site design should be functionally elegant. Laura draws inspiration from her background of theatrical design, where every physical element on the stage is imbued with meaning, and from her Bachelor of Arts in German, where every story is filled with symbolism.

Laura is the current co-leader of WxLA-MN and has served on the education committee for ASLA-MN.

Doretta received a first-class degree with Honours from the Polytechnic of Milan and joined Foster+Partners in 2001. She worked on winning competition entries as well as a variety of projects worldwide from cultural to commercial, hospitality, sports and transport. Doretta loves architecture and the role it plays in peoples lives, how it can be an expression of civic and personal values, create landmarks, define skylines, be a catalyst for sustainable development. Doretta has led numerous multi-disciplinary teams. Notable works include Lusail Stadium and Lusail Towers in Qatar, Bishops Square in London and the Smithsonian Museum's Courtyard in Washington, D.C.