M Paul Friedberg

Updated on Oct 28, 2023

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Name M. Friedberg

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M. Paul Friedberg, FASLA, (born 1931) is an American landscape architect.

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Biography

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M. Paul Friedberg was born in New York City where he attended Cornell University. In 1954 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. He said that "after navigating four socially active years the reality of growing up set in." He said that his largest influence for pursuing landscape architecture was the chance to connect people to themselves, to each other and to their environment.

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In 1958, four years after graduating, Friedberg opened his landscape practice, M. Paul Friedberg and Partners. The contributions the firm has made to the aesthetic environment of urban life have been revolutionary in design and intent. Paul Friedberg also established the first undergraduate landscape architecture program in a major city at the City College of New York, focusing on the social and physical issues inherent to an urban environment.

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In his seventies, M. Paul Friedberg continues to work and design at an amazing pace. To sum up his job, Friedberg happily smiles and says it is "not a bad way to spend [my] day," [1]. Due to Friedberg, landscape architecture was brought into the field of urban design on a large scale through the wide variety of urban spaces represented by his work. His personal philosophy is summed up in the following quote:

M. Paul Friedberg M Paul Friedberg and Partners The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Design is a personal journey. The fact that I have the power to alter the appearance and content of a site merely by placing ideas on a piece of paper or a screen, is an ongoing adventure-and exploration into the unknown about how space and form can direct human response. It is about the discovery of myself, my aesthetic preference and social values at a given point in time. I create three-dimensionally what the writer accomplishes with words. It is not without anxiety, as the ideas haven't a reality until cast in a space and experienced.--M. Paul Friedberg, Silent Auction

Jacob Riis Plaza

One of Friedberg's most notable projects was the Jacob Riis Plaza, undertaken in the mid 1960s. The Jacob Riis Complex is a series of 14-story buildings along the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The large open spaces between the blocks were poorly laid out, with little consideration of the residents' needs. Friedberg's redesign separated the space into human scaled areas using pergolas, terraces and mounds. Materials and features were selected for their robustness, for example large timbers, and vandal resistant lighting.