Liverpool Local News: John Hopkins, the Liverpool-born landscape architect behind London’s Olympic parklands, has died

JOHN Hopkins, the visionary landscape architect and mastermind of Londons Olympic parklands, has died aged 59.

Liverpool-born Mr Hopkins, a top international landscape architect, urban designer, environmental planner and author, was responsible for more than 250 acres of green space in his work at the Olympic DeliveryAuthority (ODA) from 2007 to 2011.

In directing the team who created the vibrant backdrop to last years Olympics and Paralympics in Stratford, east London, Mr Hopkins has also sowed the seeds for the UKs largest new urban park for more than a century.

Mr Hopkins died suddenly last week.

Mr Hopkins fiancee Laura Adams described him as something of an iconoclast a man who knew what he stood for and was unafraid to tell the truth.

She said: He never let us forget the urgency of our responsibility toward our environment, but he was thoughtful, with the patience and humility to plan and design projects whose real benefit can only be truly appreciated by a generation hell never know.

The Olympic Park is set to reopen in phases from this summer as the newly-named Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Mr Hopkins was a Fellow of the Landscape Institute and a Churchill Fellow in urban design, in addition to being a Corporate Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

After working on the Olympic project, Mr Hopkins moved to the US, where he was a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania while holding a similar role at the University of Greenwich in London.

He had also been leading a consulting team advising on Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee a 4,500-acre green space in addition to completing a study which would form part of landscape management strategy for Network Rail in the UK.

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Liverpool Local News: John Hopkins, the Liverpool-born landscape architect behind London’s Olympic parklands, has died