Art Cowie PIBC, FCSLA, established Eikos Planning Inc. in 1971. To quote Chuck Davies in The Greater Vancouver Book, "Eikos was the first Vancouver firm to emphasize interdisciplinary planning as a major component of landscape design". Eikos brought together practitioners from a variety of professional fields together to brainstorm on major projects all over the Province of British Columbia. Eikos has prepared over 35 official regional, community and neighbourhood area plans and has worked with many regional districts, municipalities and provincial agencies on a variety of land use planning and landscape design assignments. In park planning alone, Eikos has created plans for over 75 national, regional, community and neighbourhood parks. The firm has planned or consulted on numerous successful urban and recreation residential developments and numerous subdivisions where clients required innovative approaches. In the mid 1980's Eikos was given the assignment to prepare a park and recreation plan for the BC Place lands on the north shore of Vancouver's False Creek. As part of this plan, Eikos prepared the first vision of what the long term development might be. The waterfront and park concepts are today largely what was envisioned in this plan. In the mid 1880's Eikos had branch offices in Kelowna and Edmonton which undertook a considerable amount to planning and landscape work. For over two decades, Eikos acted as the planners for a number of smaller municipalities including White Rock, Port Moody, Oak Bay, Lillooet, Prince Rupert and others. The firm has also worked on assignments with many of the major development companies. The firm has conducted recreation and land use studies for major forest companies to determine potential for urban and rural properties that were considered excess to their operations. At one time Eikos employed a staff of 24 professionals and technicians. In 1984, Art Cowie accepted an offer to work as consultant and director of planning for the Municipality of Delta. His major assignments were to prepare an official community plan for the municipality and restructure the planning department. These tasks were completed in two years, ahead of schedule. During this period Art assigned most of the on going work of the firm to employees who have gone on, under their own practices, to be successful. Art left Delta in 1988 to return to private practice and was elected to the Vancouver Park Board and served as Chair until 1991 when he was elected as a BC Liberal Member of the Provincial Legislature, representing Vancouver-Quilchena. He served as Caucus Chair and Official Critic of Municipal Affairs, Housing and Transportation. In 1993, Art stepped aside to ensure that Gordon Campbell, the Leader of the BC Liberal Party, could be elected. After a couple of years working and advising the BC Liberal Party, Art returned again to private practice and re-established Eikos mainly as an advisory planning service to government, corporate and private clients. Eikos now cooperates with other architectural, planning, landscape design and environmental firms to undertake assignments which Art often manages.