Grant Jones - Selected Projects

Selected Projects

In the early 1970s, Jones & Jones was commissioned by the Whatcom County Park Board to develop a preservation plan for the Nooksack River in northwest Washington State. The plan identified intrinsic landscape features of high aesthetic value and made recommendations for their preservation, while suggesting other areas that would be suitable for recreational uses. The study involved mapping the river’s watershed and viewshed and then breaking it up into its component drainage basins, branches, channels, and floodplains. Each distinct river segment was then analyzed using a series of quantitative and qualitative measurements based on integrity, health, uniqueness, and resiliency. This was the first plan ever developed for a river, and the project received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (Amidon, 43).

The analytic methods employed by Jones & Jones in the study of the Nooksack River proved valuable to other projects requiring the careful management of visual resources. These included corridor planning for utilities and the design of roads.

In 1990, Jones was asked to join the design team for the expansion of the Paris to Lexington Road (aka Paris Pike), an historic 12-mile road leading from Lexington to Paris, Kentucky. The old two-lane highway could no longer handle the demands of increased traffic, but expanding the road to four lanes threatened the mature trees, historic stone fences, and original farm entrances along the route. It was the first time since World War II that a landscape architect had been approached to design a highway (Amidon, 34). Jones’ solution was to break the highway into two separate ribbons that weave through the landscape independently, while ensuring that the most characteristic features of the landscape remain intact.

The firm has become well known for the design of scenic roadways and wildlife highways, considering them a vital form of green infrastructure.

U.S. Highway 93 crosses the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, nation of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT). The 55-mile stretch of road runs north from Evaro to Polson, Montana, traversing a majestic landscape of expansive valleys and mountain ranges that is home to a great diversity of wildlife, including grizzly bears, deer, elk, bighorn sheep, and painted turtles. For much of its history, the highway sliced straight through the landscape, through small communities and towns, and through wildlife habitat, resulting in the decline of some species and in numerous roadway fatalities (Jones & Jones, 1–4).

Working closely with the CSKT, along with the Federal Highway Administration and the Montana Department of Transportation, Jones & Jones redesigned the highway to respond to and respect the unique aesthetic and ecological characteristics of the landscape, seeking ways for the land to influence the road. As the firm notes, “The design of the reconstructed highway is premised on the idea that the road is a visitor” (Jones & Jones, 1).

The design concepts for the highway, begun in 2000, sought to simultaneously encourage understanding of the land and of the communities that call it home, including the Salish and Kootenai people and rich populations of plants and animals (Jones & Jones, 1). In addition to following the topography and respecting cultural concerns, a key objective of the design process was the development of numerous wildlife crossing areas designed to ensure the safe passage of animals over or under the roadway. Road-kill data was analyzed, along with historic migration patterns, to determine where to site crossings in an effort to restore traditional wildlife movement routes.

U.S. Highway 93 now features forty wildlife crossing structures. The project received the Transportation Planning Excellence Award from the Federal Highway Administration in 2008.

Jones & Jones pioneered the habitat immersion approach to zoo design with the development of the gorilla and African savannah exhibits at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo (Hyson, 23; Hancocks, 118). In 1978, zoo director David Hancocks approached the firm for a master plan. Rather than the traditional arrangement of animal enclosures behind concrete walls and bars, Hancocks and his design team, led by Grant Jones, sought to recreate the animals’ natural habitat. The gorilla forest was developed in the first phase of the project: careful manipulation of landform, plants, and sight lines immersed not only the gorillas but also the visitors in the animals’ native habitat.

The landscape immersion method has been described as “an astonishing departure from conventional zoo design because it reflected a pronounced shift in philosophy” from a homocentric to a biocentric view of the world (Hancocks, 118). The philosophy is now widespread (Hyson, 23), and since the late 1970s, Jones & Jones has developed master plans and specialized habitat designs for scores of zoos on four continents.

ILARIS (Intrinsic Landscape Aesthetic Resource Information System) is a GIS model developed by Jones & Jones to assess the intrinsic aesthetic value of Puget Sound. In 2002, the firm was commissioned by the Trust for Public Land to develop a system to evaluate and protect important landscape features of Puget Sound and its near-shore areas.

ILARIS was based on Grant Jones’ early Fortran program from his days at Harvard, as well as on Jones & Jones’ breakthrough scenic planning work for rivers such as the Nooksack and Alaska’s Susitna. The model is a framework to synthesize and assess the biologic, cultural, and aesthetic values of intrinsic landscape features, and the result is a language that gives voice to the landscape and assists conservation and planning organizations in making land-use decisions. In 2005 ILARIS received a Research and Communication Merit Award from the Washington Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (WASLA), and in 2006 the model won the National ASLA Professional Award of Honor in the Research Category.