Hapa Collaborative

General information

Hapa Collaborative is a landscape architecture and urban design practice established with placemaking, attentiveness and collaboration in mind.
We see each project as an opportunity to partner, dream big and synthesize ideas wrought from many, often opposing, influences. Our goal is to evoke the poetry of the place and in doing so reveal something delightful but perhaps previously unseen. Most of all, we consider Hapa to be a contemporary voice for landscape architecture and a small, agile and fresh alternative to traditional firms.

Hapa Collaborative works within the full breadth of scales from master plans to pocket parks, civic spaces to private residences, streetscapes to green roofs. However we specifically enjoy addressing the leftover spaces between buildings, applying the principles of landscape urbanism to city-building, site design and community consultation. We like to explore new methods and materials, forge new relationships and ultimately create places that people remember.

Hapa means many things: half, mixed, or hybrid; originally a pejorative term for someone of part Asian ethnicity and, by extension, anything shaped by the collision of cultural influences. Hapa can be defined as an intentional disturbance – an explosion – that creates space for something new. It is an apt description of Vancouver’s cosmopolitan complexity and an emblem of our own profession’s mixed pedigree: landscape and architecture, art and science, nature and culture. Hapa is also a Japanese word for ‘leaf.’

Our studio of ten designers is a daily collaboration between people with different backgrounds and training, and a mix of skills and specialization. We love the fact that this mix is present in our design process and is often realized in the final design direction in our work. Read more about each of our Hapsters here: http://hapacobo.com/team/