Helli Pangalou is founding partner of HPA Landscape Architects, where she heads a team of 17 who work on a range of international design projects. Perhaps the firm’s best-known recent scheme has been a collaboration with architect Renzo Piano on the landscape design for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre and associated park, completed in 2016. This spectacular, large-scale formal landscape, designed with Deborah Nevins, was made to complement the buildings which house Greece’s new national library and opera house. Helli went on to work with Renzo Piano Building Workshop on the landscape design of three major hospital infrastructures in Greece, informed by her research into the ancient Asklepieion of Epidaurus and the healing properties of landscape.In her work, Helli says she emphasizes, ‘the experiential immersion into the ‘Topos’, the healing properties of landscape, the significance of outdoor living, the identity of the diverse Mediterranean landscape, in an ecologically sustainable design ethos driven by environmental clarity’.
In her talk, Helli will discuss the ways her work constitutes an evolving exploration of landscape design and placemaking as ‘dynamic forms that inform and enrich people’s lives’.
