As the founder and principal at site design group ltd., a Chicago-based urban design and landscape architecture firm, Ernest (“Ernie”) Wong has spent over three decades transforming overlooked spaces into places where people can gather, play, rest, wander, and connect. He designed Palmisano Park in 2009, and recently worked on the beautiful landscape and gardens surrounding the new Obama Presidential Center.
In this episode, Ernie explains how growing up as an Asian-American in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood influenced the way he sees cities, class, conflicts, communities, and his own career. He tells us about life-changing summers he spent in the wilderness as a teenager and why, for him, landscape architecture is more about sociology than it is about botany.
“The work that we do as landscape architects is primarily invisible. But when we can help a community realize its own identity and engage with each other—that’s huge.”
– Ernie Wong, Co-Founder and Principal of site design group, ltd.
Learn More About Ernie and site design group, ltd.
Ernie helped found the Chicago-based urban design and landscape architecture firm, site design group, ltd. in 1990. Site design group is known for its innovative and imaginative approach to community building; they consult and connect architects, companies, engineers, and institutions all across the United States and beyond to make spaces that bring people together.
Since its inception, site design group has received nearly 200 awards for their work in landscape architecture and design, including recognition from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), AIA, Congress for the New Urbanism, and Urban Land Institute.
In 2021, the firm’s work on the 75th Street Boardwalk in Chicago (which Ernie discusses in this episode, and which you can see in the images below) earned the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Honor Award in Urban Design. That same year, Ernie earned the ASLA’s Community Service award.
75th Street Boardwalk by site design group, ltd. (2020). 
About the Obama Presidential Center
There are sixteen presidential libraries spread across the United States, the newest of which is the Obama Presidential Center, which opened in June of 2026. While other presidential libraries are predominantly used as museums and research institutions—places where documents from the president’s administration are housed—the Obama Center functions as both a library and a community center. The star of the center is the many acres of public, outdoor space, fit with picnic areas and grills, tree-lined paths, a sledding hill, native wetlands, playgrounds, vegetable gardens, and more.
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc. (MVVA) was the principal landscape architecture firm behind the project. Site design group ltd. and Living Habitats (a Chicago-based landscape architecture firm run by Heidi Natura) were the local implementers of the vision. Tickets are needed to enter the structure on the Obama Center campus, but all of the grounds are free and open to the public.
More Details on Things Mentioned in the Episode:
The Student Conservation Association is the organization that Ernie attended as a teenager. It was founded in the 1950s and was modelled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, a government program in the 1930s.
Ernie also mentioned a survey that the LEGO Group conducted where children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. This survey was commissioned in 2019 through The Harris Poll; they asked 3,000 kids (ages 8 to 12) in the United States, the United Kingdom, and China to choose from five professions: astronaut, musician, professional athlete, teacher, or vlogger/YouTuber. The top choice in the US and UK was vlogger/YouTuber, though respondents from China said they wanted to be astronauts. A similar 2019 poll by Morning Consult (a company that creates online survey research technology) surveyed 2,200 Americans ages 13–38 and found that 54% said that, if given the opportunity, they’d like to be an influencer on social media.
