We Are Loureiro: John Stewart
May 9th, 2023
“There are a lot of people who don’t understand what landscape architects do,” says John Stewart, Landscape Architect and Project Director at Loureiro. “There’s still the perception that all we do is go out and plant. But we’re designers. We’re site planners. We deal with so many aspects of site development. We have to have an understanding of architecture, civil engineering, botany, soil science, and other environmental disciplines. We work with planners, with botanists. We’re the people who have to have an overall holistic view of a project, asking ourselves ‘how do these pieces fit together?’
John joined Loureiro when Loureiro purchased the assets of CR3 – a design-based landscape architecture firm – in 2019. The division is being grown by Vice President Kurt Prochorena and currently John and Andrew Freifeld (the newest addition to the team) are busy working on many types of projects from residential design all the way to campus planning including commercial, educational and municipal projects. John has experience working at just about any scale.
“We like to be flexible,” John says. “I get fulfillment from working on any type of project. Scale doesn’t matter to me. It is how all the many aspects of a project come together to get to a solution for the client that matters to me.”
With a love for developing drawings, spaces, buildings, and environments, John initially went to school for architecture. John’s father had studied architecture at Penn State, and John ended up following in his father’s footsteps before switching to landscape architecture.
“I discovered after a year or two of studying architecture that sometimes the field you want to go into and the way it is being taught don’t necessarily align,” recalls John. “That started to develop for me. The Landscape Architecture curriculum at Penn State is nationally known and well received, and I decided to go that route.”
One of the things that appealed to John was the idea of working in collaboration with nature. He cites Ian McHarg, a Scottish landscape architect and a writer on regional planning using natural systems, as an early inspiration. McHarg was one of the most influential landscape architects to bring environmental concerns into broad public awareness.
“Even back then he (McHarg) was pushing for ecological planning methods to be a part of landscape architecture and city planning. His work nodded towards respect for the land while developing spaces for people to be in.”
Fifty years in and John still loves what he does. “I just like to develop drawings, spending time sitting in front of a computer and working on a project, and then going out and seeing it built,” says John. It’s the process that still draws him to the work: looking at a project and starting to develop a sense of the space and how that space relates to the surrounding area.
“Often the question is how we can bring our expertise as professionals to a design solution that in many cases sits so lightly that no one realizes there was a hand involved in it. That has always appealed to me.”
John encourages others to get into the field of landscape architecture to see if it is right for them, but notes that the ideal mindset involves an individual who recognizes the profession is not a 9-5 job, and one who is willing to dedicate themselves to a lifetime of learning.
“Get past the technical aspect of the work, the ‘can you do this?’ What I think about is the character of a person. This isn’t new, you hear it every day, but you have to find yourself something you enjoy doing. Landscape architecture is the type of field that isn’t boring, and, as I tell my kids, if you can get into a field or profession that keeps you engaged, do it. I’ve been doing this for fifty years, and I still love it.”
