For the country’s 250th anniversary, we were asked by Fast Company about great American design. Our response: The National Parks. You can see our response below, and read the article for a list from more than 30 designers on the objects, ideas, and images that define American design.

There is no more iconic piece of public design in America than our National Park System. While it may not seem like something designed at first glance, the development and maintenance of America’s 63 national parks has involved very real and intentional design decisions by National Park Service staffers across decades. Each is tailored to the unique topography, microclimate, local culture, and regional specificity of the states across America that they’re in.

I keep thinking about Ken Burns’s documentary series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea and the lessons it holds for designers about our role in upholding democracy: that we have a responsibility to develop and preserve beautiful, natural, and freely accessible spaces that belong to everybody, for the public good today and for future generations. Our national parks offer a shared collective experience.

As these institutions that we love and often take for granted become increasingly under threat by federal funding cuts and efforts to extract these lands for private gain, we as designers have a responsibility to advocate for them.