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Landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg, celebrated for his revolutionary approach to designing in the urban public realm at a time when America’s cities—and their open spaces—were in significant decline, died on February 15. He was 93.

Born in New York City in 1931 and raised largely in Pennsylvania, Friedberg studied horticulture at Cornell University before returning to the city to establish his practice, M. Paul Frieberg & Partners (now MPFP), in 1958. He first gained recognition in the 1960s for his then-unorthodox take on playground design at several New York public housing complexes, beginning at the Carver Houses (1963) in Harlem and culminating at the Jacob Riis Houses (1965) on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. That project, Jacob Riis Plaza, is considered Friedberg’s most influential work and a watershed for the larger profession of landscape architecture. Friedberg eschewed asphalt, chain-link fences, and often-hostile, standard-issue playground equipment for a “total play environment” integrated into the landscape and centered around exploration and discovery.  At the time, there was nothing else like it in any major city and it garnered national and international recognition.

Friedberg’s Handcrafted Playgrounds: Designs You Can Build Yourself was published in 1975 by Vintage.

In a remembrance, Charles A. Birnbaum, president and CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), described the “unique approach” taken by his close friend (and former employer) to playground design: “a carefully choreographed series of simple, sculptural landscape vignettes that included a tree house, mounds, and a tunnel—all allowing for, and encouraging physical, emotional and sensory exercise and participation.”

Birnbaum has been a fierce defender of Friedberg’s work and legacy. With the TCLF, he has conducted an extensive oral history of the “active and at times confrontational maverick,” and advocated for the protection of Friedberg’s work when it has come under threat. ““He was serious about the idea of child’s play and an unrepentant believer in the virtue of cities when U.S. cities were at their nadir. He worked mostly in the public realm, which meant that everyone was his client; he knew he was responsible both to them and for them,” Birnbaum writes of Friedberg. “That challenge and joy of creating places for people, and the energy that people brought to public places, continually motivated Friedberg over a career that lasted more than six decades.”

The National Register of Historic Landmarks–listed Peavey Plaza, Minneapolis, circa 1980. Photo from the City of Minneapolis Archives, Wikimedia Commons

Those decades were prolific ones for Friedberg. Following the success of Jacob Riis Plaza, notable commissions outside of New York included a pair of innovative Minneapolis projects, the Loring Greenway and Peavey Plaza (1974, 1975); State Street Mall in Madison, Wisconsin (1977–78); Washington, D.C.’s Pershing Plaza (1981); Olympic Plaza in Calgary (1987); and public spaces farther afield in Israel and Japan. His focus returned home on numerous occasions for major New York projects, such as the East 67th Street Playground at Central Park (1987), the Winter Garden (1988) at César Pelli’s World Financial Center (now Brookfield Place), and a lushly planted rooftop plaza at Fordham University (1998). His legacy firm continues to work extensively in New York and beyond.

Pershing Park, Washington, D.C., pictured in 1980. Like Peavey Plaza, it has been threatened with—but spared from—demolition. Photo in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Although he lectured and taught widely, Friedberg’s role as educator was also rooted in the city. In 1970, he established the Urban Landscape Architecture program at the City College of New York—a first of its kind—and served as its departmental chair for the next two decades. A fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects since 1979, Friedberg was awarded the organization’s highest honor, the ASLA Medal, in 2015. His works have been recognized individually with more than 80 national and international awards.

Friedberg is survived by wife, Dorit Shahar, and their daughter, Maya, as well as two sons from his marriage to his first wife, Esther.

“Designing the landscape is an abstraction, as is the creation of music,” Friedberg said in his opening address at a 2008 TCLF conference held in Chicago. “Its function is a search for beauty. The musician achieves it by arranging sound. The landscape architect arranges space to be experienced by inhabiting it—not a bad way to start a day or spend a life.”