Trained in art, architecture, architectural history, landscape theory and urbanism, Eleanor Pries approaches buildings as operative spaces and components within larger, complex systems and ecological processes, largely enabled by specific material capacities. 
Pries leads Giant Order, a small practice that works across scales designing spaces, cities, and strategies. Giant Order supports vision with system, leveraging data, research, and visualization into visionary design related to arts, technology, and ecology. Her work engages the macro and micro — with sites ranging from regional watersheds, to sectors of cities, to underpasses, to parklets.

Pries is currently designing a light "plume" in Oakland, a very small residence in Seattle, the space planning for a historic arts renovation in the Excelsior, interim uses for 4 acres of PARKLAB in Mission Bay, and the concept and entitlements of the 21-acre Potrero Power Plant in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. Previously, she lead the visioning, design concept, and storytelling of the Pier 70 redevelopment, a 28-acre post-industrial site in San Francisco, and a finalist team for 245 acres of public realm design in the Connect Kendall Square Competition for in Cambridge, MA. Prior to forming her creative practice, Pries was a Partner and Design Principal at SITELAB in San Francisco. Previously, while at SMWM in San Francisco and The Cecil Group in Boston, her work has focused on urban waterfronts, including Russia Wharf and the Central Artery/Tunnel in Boston, Piers 92-94 in New York, downtown San Pedro in Los Angeles, and Hunters Point Shipyard and Treasure Island in San Francisco.


While at Berkeley, Pries won the John K. Branner Traveling Fellowship for Drip | Dry : Systems that Seep, a year of self-directed research on the architecture, ecologies, and materiality of over 15 complex water systems around the world; this is the main focus of her current design research. Pries has taught, reviewed, or lectured at CCA, MIT, UC Berkeley, UVA, and WIT as well as within the private sector.

Pries is the Advisory Board Chair of San Francisco's Youth Art Exchange and is an avid surfer.