What we believe
Landscape is a medium to explore big ideas and create positive change through design.
Operating as a mission-based practice, we form partnerships with clients and project teams around a shared sense of vision and purpose. We are always seeking our next great collaboration rooted in a strong alignment of values.
Site matters.
We believe in creating artful interventions to reveal each site’s unique qualities and characteristics. We listen to the land.
Design with purpose.
Every act of design is a reflection on the world we live in. Beyond project-specific goals, we believe in promoting health and well-being by providing immersive experiences to connect people with nature. We believe in research and critical thinking. We believe in the essential value of community, biodiversity, and the health of our ecosystems. We believe in creating equitable spaces to invite all and to serve all; especially vulnerable and underserved groups.
Sustaining beauty.
We merge sustainability and beauty as a single, integrated design ethos.¹ Beyond employing the principles of ecology and green infrastructure, we approach these in dialog with the cultural and experiential aspects of landscape. We believe that landscapes are as much social and cultural constructs as they are ecological ones, and that our notion of beauty is being continually formed by our perceptions and our participation. We believe that the designed landscape has the ability to reveal, to tell stories, and to ignite curiosity and an ethic of care.
Art reveals.
Art has the power to reveal things that are not widely seen or understood. Through artful interventions in the landscape, we tell stories about site, ecology and place. Art sparks curiosity and discovery, inviting people to engage with the world we inhabit. These purposeful interventions promote a deeper connection to nature, both experientially and intellectually.
1. Elizabeth K. Meyer (2008) Sustaining beauty. The performance of appearance, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 3:1, 6-23.
Thought leadership
Art and research are integrated within our practice to generate and test innovative ideas.
Dive deeper into our recent design explorations as they relate to our mission and values.
Connecting people to the broad, complex issue of pollinator decline.
A new first-of-its-kind garden for research and education. Read.
Re-Imagining Play.
Our approach to designing immersive spaces where children are encouraged to move Over, Under, and Through (O.U.T.). Read.
My Lines: Comments on Drawing.
In my practice, I draw through the duration of a project, from project to project, and beyond projects. I see three critical values in drawing: learning through observation, exploring ideas through imagination, and expressing an idea in the attempt to define an argument through representation. Read.
Engaging Senses.
Now more than ever, we are experiencing a loss of intimacy between humans and nature as well as between people and their communities. Sensory spaces can help repair the divide. Coming soon.