Demo Staurinos is a landscape architect with over 20 years of experience, designing projects from intricately executed gems like parks and playgrounds, to large-scale district plans—each focused on human experience within the urban environment. Demo is particularly interested in transforming places to provide new ways of moving, playing, and coming together. He draws inspiration from cultural artifacts or affectations that make places unique as well as from the natural systems that define ecologies with which we live.

His recent work along waterfronts have been at the forefront of resilient design and environmental justice combining infrastructural improvements with community needs for the enhancement of the public realm. He has recently completed the signature playground addition to the design of Pier 26 in New York City, the extension of Mill River Park in Stamford, Connecticut, the master plan for Dorchester Bay in Boston Massachusetts, Lock 3 Park and the Bud and Susie Rogers Garden in Akron, OH, Target Field Station in Minneapolis and several school playgrounds including the Mary McLeod Bethune School and Alain Locke School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Demo’s work is based on the idea that the built environment requires life. Whether a place is to be used as a social, ecological, cultural, economic, or playful space, it needs to exist in equitable balance with its surroundings. This fundamentally drives his process to engage a diverse group of experts—from professionals to locals—to truly understand a place and its needs. He is committed to establishing places that are not simply occupied but ultimately, beloved.