Conor O’Shea

Conor O’Shea believes that transforming the aesthetics and ecological health of the public realm—from expressway embankments to neighborhood parks to suburban streetscapes to rural interstate medians—requires daring landscape architecture that infuses urbanism with natural systems. Conor pursues this work at Hinterlands and as Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. By choosing Hinterlands as a name for his practice, a term that refers to peripheral areas of a city, Conor affirms his commitment to a holistic view of the urban environment: one that prioritizes areas and networks beyond city centers, places that increasingly constitute the bulk of the everyday public realm. Conor is a licensed landscape architect in the State of Illinois and holds Master in Landscape Architecture and Master in Design Studies degrees from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.