Charles Morris Anderson (born 1957) is a landscape architect and founder of Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture (CALA), a Seattle-based landscape architecture firm.
Charles Anderson is known for combining nature, community needs, and art into his designs, emphasizing local and national sustainability.
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Born in 1957, Anderson was raised in Jamestown, North Dakota. It was there he acquired his passion for landscaping, his career beginning when he did landscape contracting during his high school years.
Anderson shared similar ideas to other industry figures, some of whom became his mentors. Some of his mentors included Peter Walker, affiliated with the team involved in the World Trade Center Memorial project; Richard Haag, famous for his Gas Works Park project in Seattle; and Laurie Olin who, in the 1980s, served as the head chair of the landscape architecture program at Harvard University. Anderson also had special interest in the work of both Robert Smithson, an influential artist of the 1960s and 1970’s, and James Turrell, a contemporary artist who focuses on light and space.
In 1981, Anderson received his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Washington State University. He then continued his studies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he earned his Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 1985.
Anderson currently teaches as a Visiting Associate Professor at Arizona State University with upper-division Landscape Architecture students, along with his own firm internationally.
In 1994, Anderson established his self-named firm, Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture. Based in Seattle, Washington, it became a well-known firm responsible for several landscape projects.
While the primary focus area of the studio is the Pacific Northwest, projects have ranged from New York to California to Alaska. The firm has completed over 25 community-based projects within the Seattle metropolitan area.
Notable projects include providing landscape design for the Anchorage Museum expansion,[1] as well as Seattle’s 8.5 acres (3.4 ha) Olympic Sculpture Park, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, Manhattan’s Arthur Ross Terrace, and the Bellingham Art and Children’s Museum.
Some neighborhood park projects include the Roxhill Wetland and Bog Park in West Seattle and the restoration of the 500 Area of Discovery Park, both of which received Merit Awards from the Washington Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
The American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) awarded Anderson for his designs in the Tables of Water in Lake Washington, Washington,[2] the Mount Saint Helens project, the Trillium Projects in Seattle,[3] and the Arthur Ross Terrace design in Manhattan, New York.
The Washington State Chapter of ASLA inducted Anderson into the Council of Fellows in 2006.