Barbara Swift, FASLA, Hon. AIA
Barbara Swift is the founder of Swift Company LLC and has built a practice focused on the public realm in the West. Barbara鈥檚 approach presumes that the built environment involves all aspects of culture and ecology with work connected to the circumstance of time and place. The result is a diverse, award-winning practice ranging from ecological restoration and campus design to urban design and artist collaboration. The firm鈥檚 practice is rooted in core values driving a wide range of work from wild land restoration in the Grand Teton National Park to the iconic Peace Arch Point of Entry. The approach to work is founded in research, forming a thick understanding of place. Works include urban-infill with clients who care about city life, light rails systems serving and defining regions, and places of reflection and learning - libraries and universities. Strategic thinking, vigorous collaboration and values are at the heart of the firm鈥檚 practice.
As an extension of her values, Barbara is active in the Northwest community, lecturing, teaching, writing, and serving on boards and commissions. Barbara鈥檚 work has resulted in fellowships with Centrum, the European Ceramic Work Centre, the University of Washington Runstad Department of Real Estate, Bullitt Foundation, and most recently with the American Architectural League focused on small American communities. Barbara is currently working with three Canadian land trusts focused on ecosystem stewardship and climate research in the Canadian Gulf Islands.
It is inevitable that Barbara would pursue landscape architecture, with younger years in the expansive sage landscape of the Columbia River Plateau in a family embedded in the western environmental movement. This, coupled with trips to the Bay Area included an introduction to a landscape designed by Eckbo at the Berkeley Hills home and studio of a grandmother, artist Florence Swift, who collaborated with Thomas Church and Neutra. Landscape architecture was inevitable.