Alison Shipley brings a strong technical knowledge and attention to detail to all her projects, and guides innovative design ideas to technically feasible solutions. Her landscape designs seek to create socially inclusive spaces that help to strengthen communities. With over 30 years of experience at Quennell Rothschild & Partners, her work has grown from an early focus on restorations of historic parks to projects involving complex environmental issues and community involvement.
Ms. Shipley led QRP’s work for NYC Parks Community Parks Initiative, where her designs have upgraded under-served urban neighborhood parks with fresh and exciting actively programmed green spaces. Recent projects also include several waterfront sites with complex regulatory requirements, including a new 14 acre beachfront park in Far Rockaway, where she transformed large parking lots into green hills, sports fields and play areas, and new parks on Jamaica Bay, the east Bronx waterfront and the north and south shores of Long Island.
Alison has worked extensively on projects requiring coordination with a range of other professions, including artists, preservationists, architects and engineers and she is skilled at incorporating diverse inputs into cohesive designs. In collaboration with the artist George Trakas, she designed the award-winning Newtown Creek Nature Walk, a richly planted public waterfront around a Brooklyn water treatment plant.
Ms. Shipley was born and educated in the UK and after receiving a degree in Landscape Architecture from Gloucestershire College of Art & Design she worked in England, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Charleston, SC before moving to New York City.