Public space is a community’s living room. A well-designed civic landscape doesn’t just fill the space between buildings — it generates activity, reflects identity, tells a story, and gives people a reason to show up, whether it’s a Tuesday afternoon or a Saturday festival. It belongs to everyone and works for everyone.

Designing that kind of space is demanding. It requires balancing flexibility and specificity, honoring history and serving current needs, and aligning the client's vision with the reality of the people who will actually use the place. DG2 Design has navigated that balance on civic and cultural projects across the St. Louis region for more than a decade.

The Missouri History Museum North Plaza in Forest Park is one of the region’s most visible civic landscape projects. DG2 Design led the redesign of the museum’s north-facing public plaza, improving accessibility throughout, expanding gathering spaces, integrating native plantings, and ensuring the landscape could support events, casual visits, and quiet contemplation equally well. The project earned recognition as a Green Museum — an acknowledgment that sustainability and cultural stewardship can reinforce each other.

The Old Post Office Plaza in downtown St. Louis, designed by Kristy DeGuire before establishing DG2 Design, translated the mythological “Journey of Icarus” into a multi-functional urban park on a brownfield site framed by historic buildings. Working with Baird Sampson Neuert Architects of Toronto, the landscape solution combined low-maintenance native planting, public art, and a flexible spatial program that accommodates lunch crowds, outdoor movies, and casual gatherings. The project earned a 2010 ASLA Honor Award and a 2009 Midwest Construction Small Project of the Year designation.

CITYPARK — the 22,500-seat home of St. Louis CITY SC in the Downtown West neighborhood — required a landscape solution that could function as urban infrastructure 365 days a year, not just on match days. DG2 Design teamed with architects HOK and Snow Kreilich to design 31 acres of public realm, including the 2.9-acre Lou Fusz Plaza, flexible event spaces at all four stadium corners, 841 linear feet of Brickline Greenway connection, and more than 300 trees representing 21 species. Over 1,600 feet of new city streets were restored as part of the project. The landscape design earned a 2023 AIA St. Louis Honor Award, a 2024 WAN Award, and a 2024 Rethinking the Future First Award.

The Upper Muny Festival & Parking Plaza in Forest Park, designed in partnership with Horner Shifrin Engineers, renovated an 11-acre event and parking facility that serves more than 350,000 Muny patrons annually. The new design introduced raised islands, curbed sidewalks, high-efficiency LED lighting, bioretention basins, and an extensive native plant palette — 100 trees, 850 shrubs, and more than 4,300 perennials — all delivered on schedule before The Muny season opened.

21c Museum Hotel St. Louis brought DG2 Design into a collaborative process with PWWG Architects and Hufft to integrate the historic 95-year-old former YMCA building, its surrounding streetscape, and the Art Park Garden into a cohesive visitor experience. The Art Park Garden — the first of its kind in the 21c brand’s portfolio — was developed in collaboration with Laumeier Sculpture Park and features an interactive installation by artist Chandler Ahrens. A concrete amphitheater, artificial turf lawns, a grove of River Birch trees, and flexible event programming make the garden a destination in its own right.