Perry Guillot Inc. is a landscape architecture firm in Southampton, New York, specializing in design commissions for private clients and historic properties. With a body of work that is best described as landscapes that are planted—not built, the office begins every project with the stated goal to relieve a garden from an overabundance of constructed elements. Intended to inspire an awareness of the natural world, these lushly composed landscapes are guided by the perspective of an edited contemporary aesthetic and a belief that gardens be places idyllic and beautiful. Collaborating with architects both modernist and traditionalist—the firm’s work shuns stylistic constraints and design trends and is guided more strongly by a site’s environmental context and cultural history. These designed landscapes strive for a heightened essence while offering a decided preference for scale and form over textured seasonality.
A native of Baton Rouge, Perry received a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Louisiana State University. Spending summers on the East End since 1983, he relocated from New York City permanently to Southampton in 2007 building a house in North Sea.
In 2002, he created the art installation Privet Lives, an illustrated outdoor exhibition in Southampton depicting the historic evolution of the privet shrub on Long Island, and is also the author of the associated volume, Privet Lives: An Imaginary Tale of Southampton’s Iconic Shrub, published in 2004. Perry was the 2009 recipient of the Arthur Ross Award for Landscape Architecture of the Institute for Classical Art and Architecture.
Furthering life-long interests in history, architecture, and as a passionate observer of nature, Perry’s design work and commitment to excellence continues to take him to some of the most varied and extraordinarily beautiful landscape projects along the U.S. East Coast.
In 2002, he created the art installation Privet Lives, an illustrated outdoor exhibition in Southampton depicting the historic evolution of the privet shrub on Long Island, and is also the author of the associated volume, Privet Lives: An Imaginary Tale of Southampton’s Iconic Shrub, published in 2004. Perry was the 2009 recipient of the Arthur Ross Award for Landscape Architecture of the Institute for Classical Art and Architecture.
Furthering life-long interests in history, architecture, and as a passionate observer of nature, Perry’s design work and commitment to excellence continues to take him to some of the most varied and extraordinarily beautiful landscape projects along the U.S. East Coast.
The formal composition of outdoor spaces is how I often describe my work as a landscape architect so I was of course attracted to the symmetrical elegance of the year 2002 and chose that date as the time I would finally commit my thoughts for this work to paper. That summer, 147 water-colored drawings were presented as an outdoor exhibition in a nursery field of privet near the ocean in Southampton Village. The placement of the long exhibit tent, engulfed by the blooming narrow rows of strictly planted privet and filled with visitor traffic inside, mimicked the experience of driving along the town’s congested, hedged-lined streets. A book that records the work was published by powerhouse Books in 2004.
Alarmed in the 1990’s in part by the reporting from environmental journalist Andrew Revkin on the emerging effects of global warming, I chose this subject to be the subtext to my story. Combining the rich history of Southampton and the notoriety of its residents with a shrub that offered an amazing potential for pictorial invention allowed me the opportunity to express opinions on a wide range of issues that were affecting the town’s future. Imagined are depictions of forest clearing, relentless hurricanes, coastal floods and droughts that increasingly ravage the town’s farms and coastline. My drawn images, titles, and written captions provide a running narrative on the town’s evolving social, cultural, and physical development, often enlivened with a healthy dose of humor.
Starting with peaceful landscape scenes inhabited with indigenous peoples, the introduction of the privet signifies the beginning of the English settlers attempts to subdue the wildness of nature. The story progresses as the imported privet shrub is imagined in relentless compositions of symmetry, signifying a built environment becoming more complex and crowded. Later scenes depict a tragic breakdown of order as the town struggles with continued growth and ecological disaster. In the end, the tall hedges provide a metaphor for the physical and psychological barrier placed between Southampton’s citizens, and the resulting implications of their diminished appreciation and understanding of the larger natural world beyond.
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Alarmed in the 1990’s in part by the reporting from environmental journalist Andrew Revkin on the emerging effects of global warming, I chose this subject to be the subtext to my story. Combining the rich history of Southampton and the notoriety of its residents with a shrub that offered an amazing potential for pictorial invention allowed me the opportunity to express opinions on a wide range of issues that were affecting the town’s future. Imagined are depictions of forest clearing, relentless hurricanes, coastal floods and droughts that increasingly ravage the town’s farms and coastline. My drawn images, titles, and written captions provide a running narrative on the town’s evolving social, cultural, and physical development, often enlivened with a healthy dose of humor.
Starting with peaceful landscape scenes inhabited with indigenous peoples, the introduction of the privet signifies the beginning of the English settlers attempts to subdue the wildness of nature. The story progresses as the imported privet shrub is imagined in relentless compositions of symmetry, signifying a built environment becoming more complex and crowded. Later scenes depict a tragic breakdown of order as the town struggles with continued growth and ecological disaster. In the end, the tall hedges provide a metaphor for the physical and psychological barrier placed between Southampton’s citizens, and the resulting implications of their diminished appreciation and understanding of the larger natural world beyond.
Alarmed in the 1990’s in part by the reporting from environmental journalist Andrew Revkin on the emerging effects of global warming, I chose this subject to be the subtext to my story. Combining the rich history of Southampton and the notoriety of its residents with a shrub that offered an amazing potential for pictorial invention allowed me the opportunity to express opinions on a wide range of issues that were affecting the town’s future. Imagined are depictions of forest clearing, relentless hurricanes, coastal floods and droughts that increasingly ravage the town’s farms and coastline. My drawn images, titles, and written captions provide a running narrative on the town’s evolving social, cultural, and physical development, often enlivened with a healthy dose of humor.
Starting with peaceful landscape scenes inhabited with indigenous peoples, the introduction of the privet signifies the beginning of the English settlers attempts to subdue the wildness of nature. The story progresses as the imported privet shrub is imagined in relentless compositions of symmetry, signifying a built environment becoming more complex and crowded. Later scenes depict a tragic breakdown of order as the town struggles with continued growth and ecological disaster. In the end, the tall hedges provide a metaphor for the physical and psychological barrier placed between Southampton’s citizens, and the resulting implications of their diminished appreciation and understanding of the larger natural world beyond.
Perry Guillot Inc
Landscape Architecture
Position available: landscape architect with 3+ years professional experience, please send resume and work samples to p@guillotinc.com in PDF form (<5MB).