Studio Lily Kwong
New York-based landscape designer Lily Kwong works at the intersection between horticulture, urban design, contemporary art, fashion and wellness, reconnecting people to nature through transformative landscape projects and site-specific botanical art installations.
Kwong uses her passion for nature, developed at an early age among the Redwood trees in Northern California, to create cultural experiences that harmonize people within the environment.
After working as a Project Director at the LVMH Miami Design District where the tropical landscape is integrated into luxury retail and artworks ranging from Sou Fujimoto’s building facade to a Buckminster Fuller dome, Lily studied sustainable design with horticulturalists from South Florida to the New York Botanical Garden. Drawing inspiration from the Land Art Movement, Lily and her eponymous next-generation landscape studio use plant life as a medium to re-imagine the urban landscape.
What sets Kwong’s work apart is how it crosses disciplines and categories: her academic background is in urban planning, but her concepts encompass a poetic spirit that ultimately creates magical, visually evocative works that connect viewers back to nature.
Employing an exit strategy for the plants she uses in each temporal installation, donating them to schools or aged-care facilities, replanting and repurposing them after their original use is completed, Studio Lily Kwong’s gift is alchemizing nature and culture into enriching environments with a focus on sustainability, social responsibility, and how we can more effectively create environmental change.
Glossier
For its Seattle pop-up, Kwong partnered with cult beauty brand, Glossier, on the design, production and installation of a verdant landscape inspired by the area’s natural topography.
The bright space was filled with plant-covered mounds of varying sizes highlighted by splashes of pink and purple wildflowers in peak season. Live moss, Mexican feather grass and flowering shrubs were among the array of plants used to adorn the hills, which were constructed using wooden ribs and wire mesh.
Bal Harbour: Moongates
Enhancing the sophisticated aesthetic of Bal Harbour Shops and providing an exquisite, memorable experience for all of its visitors, Kwong created a one-of-a-kind landscape art installation called ‘Moongates’ that used plant life as an artistic medium to highlight the surrounding tropical, open-air setting of the retail destination’s center courtyard.
The lush, picturesque gates featured 8 circular floral structures measuring 10 feet wide by 9 feet tall. Filled with thousands of rich red, orange, yellow and gold orchids, the unique interactive floral art installation honored the celebratory nature of the holiday season.
Kwong writes that her studio’s mission is to ‘reconnect urban people to nature,’ and with their enormous scale and delicate construction, these pieces couldn’t fail to grab pedestrians’ attention.— Vox Media
Phillips: Auction House
Lily Kwong curated a selection of landscape photography for the Phillips photography pre-sale exhibition, held in the famed auction house’s New York galleries in July 2020. The collaborative exhibition, which was originally intended to be accompanied by Lily’s sculptural botanical artwork, had to adjust in scope to include digital viewing and limited in-person appointments as a result of global events.
I see photography as being in direct conversation with time and human perception – you are capturing a moment, and re-calibrating your relationship with time and your environment, just as a garden does.— Lily Kwong
EVA Air
For its campaign targeting traveling creatives, Taiwanese airline EVA Air (Evergreen Airways) partnered with agency MullenLowe to send three artists to Taipei, concepting creative projects in a cabin at 40,000 feet before bringing them to life on the ground once they landed.
Kwong created a sprawling floral installation in full bloom, dreamt up midflight, in the middle of a busy Taipei night market. As it caught the eye of each and every passerby, her meandering floral path of red and blue blooms brought nature into an urban area while also bringing the community together. In a finale that seemed almost magical, local people were encouraged to take the flowers home with them.
Learning about local foliage from a native and sharing what she learned with the surrounding community, Kwong’s landscaping genius bridged language barriers and made technology an effective method for communication. Her story shared the commonality of finding inspiration and influences in new places, faces, and the flight that brought her there.
EVA Air campaign film
A relationship with the natural world can help teach us those universal, timeless lessons that are the keys to our preservation.— Lily Kwong
Take-Two Interactive x E3
For 2018’s E3 convention, the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, Kwong partnered with Take-Two Interactive games and UNDO Lab on an 8,000 square foot restorative oasis to curate and elevate the consumer experience within an otherwise hectic tradeshow environment.
The VIP-only meeting space immersed the attendees in an environment that heightened senses and transported them to a tranquil space, thanks to Kwong’s calming interior landscape installation.
St-Germain Los Angeles
In celebration of Maison St-Germain’s LA debut, Kwong collaborated with the French elderflower liqueur brand on a stunning immersive installation of landscape art featuring more than 20,000 blooms at LA’s legendary Houdini Estate in the Hollywood Hills.
The one-night-only visual experience featured elements of magical realism and illusions throughout the five-acre property, including magicians, a performance by art organization NoOne ArtHouse, improvisational sound art by Patrick Belaga and Celtic tarot reading. Vintage black-and-white films were projected in gazebos, and the creation of a ‘Light Maison,’ made out of projected lights and hanging flowers, was a highlight among guests who flocked to snap photos.
After the event, all florals were donated to The 14th Factory’s gallery in downtown Los Angeles to accompany the disassembly of Kwong’s ‘Garlands’ installation there, creating a one-day pop-up floral shop experience, where flowers were gifted to the community of Lincoln Heights and greater Los Angeles.
I was deeply inspired by the project site. I wanted to layer the landscape with dynamic performances and art pieces ranging from dance to archival ‘magic’ projected films to a sound installation featuring sacred tones.— Lily Kwong
Lily’s take for L.A. includes discovery moments throughout the estate that still has caves, hidden tunnels, and terraced gardens. Her romantic-yet-whimsical journey celebrates the joyful decadence of summer indulgence, with an opportunity for guests to enjoy a rare fleeting moment of exuberance in the spirit of 1920s années folles.— Camille Ralph Vidal, St-Germain brand ambassador
Freedom Gardens
Studio Lily Kwong’s mission is to reconnect people to nature and to create community. In direct response to the most harrowing public health crisis of our lifetime, the ‘Freedom Gardens’ initiative aims to help our community grow thriving edible gardens to support their physical and mental health, and safeguard them from a volatile centralized food system and a collapsing job market.
Studio Lily Kwong’s mission is to reconnect people to nature and to create community. In direct response to the most harrowing public health crisis of our lifetime, the ‘Freedom Gardens’ initiative aims to help our community grow thriving edible gardens to support their physical and mental health, and safeguard them from a volatile centralized food system and a collapsing job market.
It’s estimated that home, school and community gardeners produced close to 40 percent of the country’s fresh vegetables from about 20 million gardens – or an astonishing 9-10 million tons of produce, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables in the early 1940s.
It’s time to revive gardening as a civic duty during this moment of peril and crisis. Nothing will be more valuable at this pivotal moment than self-sufficiency.— Studio Lily Kwong
How to build a Freedom Garden Webinar
Grand Central Terminal: Highland Park Orkadia
Bringing Orkney, Scotland to life in the heart of New York City, Kwong planned, facilitated and executed an immersive installation titled ‘Highland Park Orkadia’ in collaboration with Forte Mare and Highland Park distillery for the launch of its newest single malt scotch, ‘The Light.’
The experience was not only a celebration of the summer solstice and Highland Park’s home on the Orkney Islands, but also a nod to the distillery’s Nordic ancestry and the Vikings’ immense respect for nature, exploration and creativity.
Kwong brought the wild, yet calming, landscape to life in Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall with over 2,000 square feet of live moss, native grasses, and 220 pots of purple heather as a nod to the distillery’s 220th anniversary.
Following the three-day installation, ‘Highland Park Orkadia’ was deconstructed and given to an organization that filled hospital rooms with plant life.
Highland Park Orkadia making of, New York
Cadillac House: Summer in Winter
In 2018, Kwong collaborated with Visionaire, a multidisciplinary fashion-focused agency that partners with artists to bring imaginative and radical art and design to life, on a breathtaking large-scale landscape installation at lower Manhattan’s Cadillac House titled ‘Summer in Winter.’
The 1,000-square-foot botanical oasis merged species and typologies from 37 countries and 7 continents including ferns from Australia, flowering plants from the tropical Americas, rainforest trees considered sacred by Buddhists, succulents native to Southern Africa, and cycads known as living fossils. The planting palette was a celebration of diversity, equatorial beauty and rich environmental and cultural histories.
The exhibit offered its guests an opportunity to reconnect with nature in its purest form and to explore the complexities of climate change as they walked among centuries-old species, conjuring the impossible within the dense urban reality of concrete and commerce.
Kwong worked with other artists and nonprofits to program the space, partnering with composer Gary Gunn on an original composition to play throughout and assembling a panel of urban designers and creative thinkers. She also hosted an afternoon with Apex for Youth, an organization offering educational resources to underserved Asian and immigrant youth.
As the show came to a close, visitors had the opportunity to deconstruct ‘Summer in Winter’ as a community and take a piece of its magic home with them.
Summer in Winter featured in Visionaire campaign film
Not only is ‘Summer in Winter’ a destination for a sensory experience, but it is also a learning experience through the filter of Lily. I thought of this idea of ‘Summer in Winter’ as a reaction to climate change. NYC winters seem harder and harder and a respite seemed necessary. At the same time, we’re creating a paradise that is unfathomable in the natural world.— Cecilia Dean, Co-founder, Visionaire
The 14th Factory
The 14th Factory was a monumental, multimedia, socially engaged art and documentary experience conceived by Hong Kong-based British artist, Simon Birch. Transforming three acres of an empty industrial warehouse and lot on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles into the city’s largest experiential art project, Birch and his creative collaborators created an ever-changing immersive environment of 14 interlinked spaces comprising video, installation, sculpture, paintings and performance.
Kwong guided the original design concept for the garden in the ‘Garlands’ installation. Her concept, a landscape based on moon topography that was made out of sod, consisted of a sloping boxed field of grass in the middle of the warehouse, divided by line of Cyclamen flowers, with swings alongside one of the long edges and sounds of chirping birds come from speakers.
Conceived as an artistic response to a world on the cusp of unprecedented change, The 14th Factory celebrated the human potential to adapt, create and collaborate and attracted over 100,000 visitors throughout its extended run.
Art Basel 2019: One Thousand Blooming Moments at Tree of Life
In celebration of Miami Art Week, Kwong adorned Faena’s beloved Tree of Life with one thousand handmade blessings in the form of flags by Moral Turgeman, in partnership with Maison St-Germain.
Inspired by the thousand fresh hand-picked elderflowers that are used to craft each bottle of St-Germain, ‘One Thousand Blooming Moments’ transformed the Tree of Life into a luxuriant garden where each flag was individually hand-cut with intention, dyed with purpose, and strung with love. Featuring rich colors inspired by the natural beauty of Miami, guests experienced an overhead composition of graduating light to dark hues, representing the natural cycle of both the Tree of Life and elderflowers.
One Thousand Blooming Moments borrowed from sacred tying ceremonies found across cultures. The flags, when tied to the tree itself, were a part of a beautiful ritual which has been said to grant wishes.
The High Line: Maison St-Germain
In celebration of the summer solstice, Kwong created a quarter-mile landscape installation on New York City’s iconic elevated park, the High Line, in partnership with artisanal liqueur, St-Germain. In the Chelsea Market Passage from 14th to 18th Streets, Kwong transformed a public space into a veritable hanging garden of botanical delights in which wandered among living garden walls arranged like an undulating 16th-century French labyrinth while canopies of lush blooms floated overhead.
In order to visualize the fact that each bottle of St-Germain is made from a thousand elderflowers, all handpicked during an ephemeral two-week season, Kwong installed over 13,000 flowers and 200 linear feet of green walls on the High Line.
The project also featured three days of art activations featuring composers, musicians, choreographers and dancers, including a breathtaking modern dance performance by Mafalda Millies that paid homage to the Solar Do-Nothing Machine, a toy sculpture by Charles and Ray Eames.
Following the installation, the florals were donated to a humanitarian nonprofit organization affiliated with the United Nations.
St-Germain really empowered me to express my design vision, and in the process, gave a platform to so many gifted artists to create an extraordinary installation on one of New York’s most iconic landmarks.— Lily Kwong
Art Basel 2017: Tree of Life
In celebration of the 2017 Art Basel festival in Miami Beach, Kwong revitalized the Faena Hotel’s iconic Clusia rosea tree, which suffered damage in the wake of Hurricane Irma’s devastation, with a site-specific botanical installation titled ‘Tree of Life’ commissioned by St-Germain.
Trees are considered bridges that connect the heavens to the mortal, earthly realm in cultures ranging from the Maya to the Japanese. The piece’s concept honored this cultural tradition of ‘tree worship,’ which crosses beyond the borders of religion, geography and time.
Capturing the spirit of abundance present in every bottle of St-German, made from thousands of elderflower blossoms, Kwong’s piece featured sculptural masses of exotic orchids and epiphytes indigenous to South America, East Asia, Africa, and beyond sweeping up and across the building’s façade in the hotel’s iconic backyard.
Kwong also reprised her ‘Maison’ installation built from beams of light on the beach, dressed with prisms and hundreds of bromeliads and air plants. These plant sculptures were activated by Faena Theater’s SENSATIA Cabaret, which performed a ceremonial dance inspired by the ‘Tree of Life.’
Shou Sugi Ban House
Set on three woodland acres bordering the Parrish Art Museum in the pastoral hamlet of Water Mill, NY, Shou Sugi Ban House is an understated but luxe holistic healing retreat that embodies Japanese culture and Wabi Sabi principles, with respect for the natural world and its healing properties.
The grounds, which comprise a pebbled courtyard and a three-acre garden, were designed by Kwong in partnership with Topiaris of Lisbon, Portugal and are intended to form an important element of the upscale retreat. Winding pathways, reflective pools, fountains, and a landscape inspired by the local dunescape and Japanese gardens allow guests to connect with the natural world around them.
Crosby Street Hotel
Firmdale Hotels tapped Kwong for the landscape redesign of a private VIP suite and courtyard gardens at the luxurious Crosby Street Hotel in the heart of New York City’s SoHo.
Kwong designed a private outdoor space for the Meadow Suite, located on the hotel’s second floor, as an English country meadow behind a plotted out grass area. She incorporated an array of plants and grasses that would thrive in the New York climate while evoking the charming sense of an English garden, allowing guests to use the space more freely, perhaps to a morning coffee on the terrace or a sprawling picnic on the grass.
Downstairs, Kwong brought more indigenous grasses and plants into the hotel’s secret Sculpture Garden, a green oasis cascading with abundant foliage, complete with tall magnolia trees providing scale and serenity.
NeueHouse Madison Square: The Longhouse
Long lacking in outside dining capabilities, NYC has undergone a radical transformation in 2020 in order to accommodate the needs of bars and restaurants – and the safety and mental health of its residents. As part of Kwong’s ongoing partnership with NeueHouse, the private workspace and cultural home for creators, innovators, and thought leaders, Studio Lily Kwong contributed to NeueHouse Madison Park’s urban streetscape with an elegant evergreen palette within The Longhouse by Australian architectural firm BVN. Raising the bar for communal spaces in a post-pandemic world, the entire structure is an upcycled re-imagination of the outdoor experience in New York City.
