I love to design. I love to build more.

Grant me the clarity to face the things I cannot change with the desire to investigate and learn, the courage to fail, and the curiosity to persist at perpetual improvement.

Part frustrated architect, I practice Landscape Architecture with the technical logic of an engineer, focus and discipline of an analyst, intuition of an artist, and the skill of a craftsman. With an international career that has spanned more than 1/3 of my lifetime, I’ve been blessed with opportunities to learn from and share among some of the professions top practitioners. I now find myself coming to terms with aspects of my person and career that have driven me all along; a deep-seated purpose to bridge the gap between the conceptual practice of landscape imagination – the vision – and an evolutionary understanding of unique methods and materials through which landscapes are assembled. It is with this holistic understanding of the multi-faceted world of design that resists perpetuation of a built environment that claims it is “all about landscape” at the same time subverting its systemic function in thin veneer and digital representation.

My career success can be partially attributed to an unbridled and defining curiosity that supports an ability to extend myself beyond the limits of our professional threshold in the studio and in collaboration with other landscape architects, engineers, architects, fabricators, and builders. Fear cannot exist with a driven sensibility for submerging oneself in understanding “landscape” in all of its subtleties. An undeterred optimism – some kindly suggest naiveté or “uniquely Canadian” - is inherent in the way I approach design. For me, like many, it is the craft through which visions are implemented and where “design” occurs; fluid problem solving at the interface between ideation and construction. This process continues beyond the build phase where time, cost and quality compete for a podium that only supports Gold; bronze destined to receive the patina of time on a sea-side guardrail.

Arguably, Landscape Architecture exists in the breadth of scope and skill at understanding many systems and the ideation and composition of those systems in the way they manifest themselves on any given site. It’s disciples’ more generalist abilities to offer valuable input in a project’s early phases establishes a stronger, more comprehensive relationship of inside-outside programming, and subsequent natural fit with the surrounding land. It is not by accident but by design.

With all the fervor of an architectural convert seeking to visually distinguish their creations in support of futuristic or contemporary style and full-bleed glossy-spread appeal, Landscape Architecture professionals risk foregoing a deeper understanding of the fundamental methodologies and programmatic contributions that support more sustainable and resilient outcomes. While there are architects with a great sensitivity to site and grading, there are also many Landscape Architects without it. Each discipline must better understand the other; a narrow perspective in either frustrates the other. This applies to an historic perspective as well as current topics.

With a relatively linear historic evolution, Architecture struggles to move beyond a focus on the building-to-building complex while landscape - arguably by definition - encompasses many areas of thought - architecture, biological science, art, etc.; the importance of each shifts over time and within any given project. Paradoxically, landscape is, by nature, more difficult to define concisely. Despite a seemingly endemic case of professional practice that has seen a “grass-is-greener” shift, most design educations today continue to focus insufficiently on the parallel discipline. As a result, self-education, curiosity, and empathy are imperative, possibly the only learned traits that hold the potential to foster a functioning fluidity in collaborative work: architects need study landscape, and landscape architects, architecture.

Working primarily in the vertical realm at a macro-scale, Architects rarely behold the elevation of a human-scaled building twenty feet tall as large enough. Landscape Architects work primarily in the horizontal realm at a micro-scale. For us, an 18-inch grade change is a lot with impacts that ripple exponentially, influencing our macro environment at any given adjustment. To consider the impacts of this symbiotic relationship it is incumbent upon our comprehensive understanding of design in the 4^th dimension; time the only differentiator from the three-dimensional world of Architecture.

Populating the discourse of multiple fields beyond the allied professions are notions of “resiliency” and “sustainability” (interesting that resiliency IS sustainable yet seems to be marketed as record of the week) eliciting near-visceral responses from politics to network engineering. Ironically, in our pursuit of these objectives we are easily mesmerized by products, systems, and pro forma that offer a panacea but are not in and of themselves compatible with each other or the challenges where opportunity is forecast. Too often we can be quick to rely on others to advise us on “true cost” or “conventionally sound methods.” Unknowingly, it appears a growing usurping of our abilities and training that further constrain the construction of truly robust, long-lasting landscapes.

Ours is a world of natural changes from chrysalis through metamorphosis. We move from concept through built environment, manipulating and composing vibrant but perishable materials, working with life cycles in universal time, forever resisting the urge to synchronize project time with Mother Nature. It is in this process that landscape becomes the privileged form of human development, not buildings. More than ever it is the living “mother board” of open space design and stewardship that shapes programmed interactions between people, nature, ecology, and dictates the nature and form of its supporting infrastructure. Nature must be incorporated into everyday life, taking us beyond the notion of a preserved, museum-like display separate from people. This must be done in the form of high design - not mimicking nature - creating stellar living spaces that put us back in touch with our place in the natural world. Art, architecture, human health and comfort, resource conservation and habitat development all fall within this larger socio-environmental goal.

So. The next time we default to covering our problematic walls, roofs, and obscure lobby entrances with trees and prolific growth that could only be replicated in the most tropical of climates, understand that a design palette that is living objects to this form of treatment. While Architecture can be equipped with an infrastructure to support living systems, its outward cursory pursuit of such concepts more often borders the obsessive, bourgeois, and apologetic, and could only be conceived after watching too many hair club for men advertisements. Plants prefer to grow out of the ground; at the very least a substantial volume that reflects its otherwise natural environs. If you want biomass for your walls, terraces or soffits, please use something easier like willow wattles, plastic boxwood, or Wasabrod.