LAND RELATIONS
Our greatest joy and our best work arises from direct relations with land. With the soils, plants, water, rocks, and critters. With the humans who dwell there. We work in oscillation between the office and the land. Between the land itself and the maps and models we make of it. This approach keeps us our design work in check with reality and feeds our hearts.
LAND REPRESENTATION We are cartographers. We combine USGS surveys with up-to-date drone-aerial imagery and utility and/or property surveys. Through context mapping, we describe the land in your care within its broader hydrologic, geologic, and ecological context. These mappings provide an important framework for developing and communciation our ideas about ongoing and future relations in the land.
DESIGN-GARDENING
Before putting pencil to paper, mouse to screen, we get to know the land through gardening. We plant, seed, weed, water, and prune. We assemble rocks and decaying logs for amphibian friends. We make small changes to the shape of the ground, moving water, collecting silt, changing who can grow where. Through this work, these relations, we start sketching (on the ground and on paper) how larger changes might be integrated with ease and care.
DESIGN-BUILD Some alterations to the land require more planning and drawing. When a structure is being added, a road estalished, e building of new structures, large earthworks, or the establishment of a new plant community,. More significant site interventions require more planning and more drawing, especially when they have the potential to be detrimentall to the biotic community if done poorly.
EARTHWORK
PLANT RELATIONS
STONEWORK
PLANTS
Our greatest joy is in the direct care of places. We get to know the soils, plants, water, rocks, and critters dwelling in a place before intervening in those relationships. Our designs are only as good as our observations of the party already happening. For these reasons, we prefer projects that combine extended on-site work with concentrated office time.