Work Overview
Designing inclusive, sustainable, and future-ready spaces that enrich lives and strengthen communities.
Vireo is the best in the Midwest at crafting innovative, healthy outdoor environments that are resilient, holistic, and designed with the future in mind. Our unique combination of skills and abilities makes this possible. We engage the entire team and combine our technical knowledge and creativity to create exceptional solutions.
At the heart of Vireo’s project development process is thorough and authentic collaboration. We have found over three decades that it’s imperative to connect to people who care about the places in their lives if we are to bring to life designs that help create thriving communities. While we bring deep expertise, we embrace the communities we seek to serve and recognize their input may be the most valuable of all when it comes to creating gathering spaces.
Landscape Architecture + Site Design
Community Engagement + Visualization
Vireo takes a holistic approach to helping communities envision vibrant and sustainable futures. When creating places for people, they need to be embraced as an integral part of the conversation. We meet them where they are and seek out the underrepresented voices. We help them find the right balance of new development, services, environmental protection, and innovative change.
At the earliest stages of the project, we work with our clients to create a right-sized plan for in-person and digital engagement that is scaled and tailored specifically for the task at hand. Only then can we truly engage the community to discuss, explore, investigate, analyze and build together. A critical element of that collaboration is the rich and detailed visualizations we create at key steps along the way. These renderings allow us to create and work toward a truly shared vision together.
Planning + Urban Design
Planning and urban design are complex and far-reaching pursuits that seek to shape the future of our communities. They guide the physical form of our neighborhoods, towns and cities to create spaces that are functional, sustainable and attractive.
They’re equal parts science and art, taking a great deal of expertise in a wide range of disciplines to do well. But, at their heart is a connection to the people who make up that community – their history and their aspirations.
Successful planning and urban design start with a careful and thorough inventory of the land and all resources (natural, economic and human) as a foundation. With each undertaking, Vireo’s planners identify the strengths present in a community along with the gaps in service and opportunity.
Natural Resources + Stormwater
Vireo was founded on the idea of doing what is right for the environment and that embracing sustainable and resilient planning and design is truly the only choice. For 25 years, Vireo has been a regional leader in promoting sustainability, resiliency, livability, green infrastructure, and environmental conservation on a wide variety of project types.
We take a comprehensive approach to designing and planning for the built environment that enables the world and its fragile ecosystems to prosper. Creative stormwater management, thorough natural resource plans, and regenerative ecosystem restoration projects are all key to creating a healthy, happy and thriving economic climate. We help communities realize this vision for themselves. Ultimately our work is all focused on helping make communities more efficient, livable, prosperous and sustainable over the long haul.
Parks + Recreation
Our hearts and our deepest expertise lie with public parks and multi-use pedestrian trails. We plan and design solutions that entertain, engage, and challenge all users in a variety of ways. We remove potential barriers, make the parks accessible to all, and create better opportunities for achieving a healthier, more connected community.
Vireo is the best in the Midwest at crafting innovative, healthy outdoor environments that are resilient, holistic, and designed with the future in mind. Our unique combination of skills and abilities makes this possible, from park planners and designers to community engagement specialists and natural resource planners. We engage the entire team and combine our technical knowledge and creativity with a truly collaborative process that makes it possible to create exceptional solutions for each park and each community.
Multimodal Planning + Streetscapes
Effective multimodal transportation systems and streetscapes can entirely change communities for the better. They can connect neighbors to employment, shops, schools, parks, and each other. They can provide an instant escape into nature, and they can make it easy for people to live healthier, more active lives.
Our staff has mastered both the art and the science of creating systems that truly succeed. More than two decades of experience together has shown us that it takes an uncommon collaboration to make multi-modal and trail design projects a success. But before any of the connections happen, a proactive and far-reaching community engagement process is necessary to make the right connections for the community.
Our work on each public space design focuses on the user experience, walkability and other healthy design principles, ensuring an added layer of benefit to the community’s public and green spaces, helping them enhance their brand as a healthy place to live. By doing so, we begin to integrate solutions that remove potential barriers and create better opportunities for achieving a healthier community.
Federal Planning + Design
For more than 20 years, Vireo has been working with the National Park Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Cemetery Administration and more to provide the highest quality service to Federal agencies as they work to connect people to our history and natural resources. In Puerto Rico, New York, Michigan, Missouri and points all around the country, we have created plans and designs for NPS visitors’ centers, new National cemeteries and remembrance gardens, historical sites, and preservation plans for critical ecosystems on Federal lands.
No matter the project type, working for Federal agencies requires a particular attention to detail and an expectation of the highest quality work, along with effective interagency coordination. Whether it’s highly detailed construction documents for a new national cemetery honoring our veterans, or a watershed conservation plan on Tribal lands, Vireo’s landscape architects, planners and ecologists approach each with the same commitment.