Founder of GROSS. MAX
Eelco Hooftman’s career is defined by a distinctively conceptual and cross-disciplinary approach to landscape architecture that challenges traditional boundaries between art, ecology, and urbanism. After completing his studies at Wageningen University in 1988, he spent the following years refining a design philosophy that integrates “Dutch experimentation with British wit,” eventually co-founding the internationally acclaimed practice GROSS. MAX. in 1995 alongside Bridget Baines. As a founding partner, Hooftman has led some of Europe’s most significant urban transformations, most notably the conversion of Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport into a vast public park and the master planning of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. His professional trajectory is equally rooted in academia; he has held prestigious teaching positions as a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at the Edinburgh College of Art, where he has influenced a generation of designers to view landscape as a dynamic, temporal medium. Recognized for his contributions to the field with honors such as the European Landscape Award, Hooftman continues to bridge the gap between rigorous large-scale planning and poetic, site-specific interventions.
