Landscape Architecture
Studio Kezia’s inaugural project. 2023-present
Role: Principal
Location: Boston, MA
Design and documentation of a new 3,000 sq ft playground for a non-profit daycare/preschool at the edge of West Roxbury adjacent to the Arnold Arboretum and Allandale Woods. Community engagement with the staff and families of the school to determine desired play activities/uses, aesthetic interests, and risk tolerances. Permitting with City of Boston and local agencies (ongoing). Determining resilient native, low-maintenance and low-cost vegetation strategy that provides sensory opportunities and required shade value.
Concept Design for The Forest Playground
Existing Conditions
Existing infant playspace
Existing toddler playspace
Existing preschool playspace. Centrally located ginkgo tree will be relocated to perimeter.
Concept Design Alternate for The Meadow Playground
We held a week-long community engagement exercise in which we posted boards in the daycare soliciting feedback from families and staff and were present to answer questions.
With: Studio AKA
Role: Contract Landscape Architect, 2023
Location: Bethesda, MD
Concept 1
Concept 1B (alternative)
Concept 2
With: Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture
Role: Designer, 2014-2018
Location: Hunting Valley, OH
The client for this project is committed to creating a homestead for art and nature. The 165-acre property located on a cliffside over the Chagrin River outside of Cleveland contains extensive meadowlands that provide habitat for the bobolink, as well as orchards and forest. A growing collection of sculpture and land art is being distributed across the property, each piece sited carefully within a chosen context. The client asked us to find inspiration within the style of Czech cubism for our design of the garden landscape surrounding the house while also incorporating formal symmetrical relationships into viewsheds from the house.
My most significant role in the project was to design and detail all of the paving patterns and terraces, site walls, the walled garden, the ponds, and the swimming pool, as well as to create the layout and materials plans and detail sheets for hardscape. I was involved in helping to design site infrastructure: grading 1.25 miles of road on the site, the stabilization of collapsed steep slopes, and layout for generator and transformer. Throughout the project, I also contributed to the planting design, visualization efforts, and structural coordination. Before leaving RH I was engaged in the siting of sculptures which involved coordination with galleries, engineers, the contractors, and the client.
aerial view from the northeast
illustrative plan of house and pond area
grading plan of the house and pond area
planting scheme diagrams for the 'ribbon', a faceted embankment between the house and the pool
entry court, terraces, and gardens surrounding the house
paving layout and key for the South Terrace
paving layout and key for the Dining Terrace
some of dozens of paving pattern explorations early in the design development process
entry gardens with Thomas Jeckyll gate purchased at auction
long walk to the 'Belvedere'
sculpture location map
siting and designing a place for a sculpture by the artist Xu Zhen
the sculpture in place; landscape under construction
the beech tree hedge will grow over time and create a room for the sculpture
With: Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture
Role: Designer, 2014-2017
Location: Pound Ridge, NY
This project is a collaboration between Reed Hilderbrand and Selldorf Architects. The scope of landscape work includes an 800-foot-long drive leading to a parking court, a plinth on which the new house will sit, an interior courtyard, a pool and terrace, an existing moss garden which will be supplemented with new plantings and a rigorous maintenance regime, as well as various forms of infrastructure and maintenance throughout the woodland and wetland on site.
My role in the project was the design and detailing of hardscape features such as site walls, fencing, terraces and paving patterns; and the interior courtyard. I contributed significantly to DD and CD drawing sets, taking care of most of our coordination with structural and planting consultants. I participated in CA and coordination with the architects and contractors through the end of the project.
grading plan of house and pool area
illustrative plan of house and pool area
pool terrace paving plan
courtyard scheme sketches
view of pool and moss garden under construction from plinth
view of moss garden under construction
the custom mahogany and aluminum fence filters light and separates the moss garden and pool area
pool during construction
courtyard under construction
I worked closely with the masons to choose stones and lay out the entry walk
entry walk
With: Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture
Role: Primary Designer, 2017-2018
Location: Chestnut Hill, MA
This middle and high school renovation was a collaboration with NADAAA in which Reed HIlderbrand was brought in after SD to design the interior courtyard and a simple work terrace outside the school’s maker space workshop. The angled wall of the courtyard inspired us to play with the shape of a parallelogram throughout the design from the pavers to the planters to the benches.
I led the design of the courtyard with the guidance of a project manager and Gary Hilderbrand. I was responsible for all illustrative drawings throughout, as well as the DD and CD sets. I was able to successfully VE the plan without losing our design intent. I actively participated in construction observation until the project wrapped in Spring 2018.
conceptual site organization diagrams
concept of bisecting the space with a long diagonal zig-zag wall and repeating the walls throughout the site in a less continuous way
plan prior to VE; ultimately, all of the planting and walls in the paved area were removed and we were limited to a quantity of 2 trees
drainage concept diagram
catenary lighting diagram
bench lighting diagram
rhino & photoshop rendering
rhino & photoshop rendering
overhead view of courtyard from upper deck of building
planting concept vignettes
VE planting concept vignettes; a grouping of several birch trees, a grouping of 3 canopy trees, or a single specimen shade tree; ultimately, we were limited to 2 birch trees
construction progress of precast benches, stairs, and steel plates
paving construction progress
paving construction progress
With: Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture
Role: Project Manager, 2017-2018
Location: South Kingstown, RI
An architect purchased a 6 acre site adjacent to a freshwater wetland and pond on which to construct a new house and hired RH to create a master plan. I went to site with a drone and captured compelling imagery that I used to construct inventory and analysis diagrams and base initial conceptual ideas on.
I took aerial photographs of the site with a drone camera and joined them together
longitudinal and cross sections through the existing site
map of deciduous canopy based on aerial photography
map of evergreen canopy based on aerial photography
the topographic map of the site reveals its post-glacial history
slope percentages show us the most suitable areas for certain programs
diagram of site topography and drainage
diagram of site character
existing site vegetative character
With: Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture
Role: Project Manager / Primary Designer, 2016-2018
Location: Tampa, FL
This project consists of an entire block redesign in downtown Tampa near the waterfront. RH was brought in after the building design was already developed. The architects designed two towers with adjacent parking garages that frame the site. The landscape that we were charged with designing consisted of an interior pedestrian and vehicular shared retail street, a plaza with full southern exposure, and the streetscapes around the block.
My role in the project was to manage the design work which was done by myself and a new designer, as well as to manage coordination with the civil and architectural teams. The design is centered around creating a comfortable shaded space that protects users from the elements and the adjacent highway while providing services for employees of the office towers and guests who park in the garages and walk to the nearby hockey stadium for games.
After several months of design explorations the client decided not to purchase the full block. The landscape area now consists of the southeast quadrant of the block.
site context (rendering of towers is near the center of the image just above the curving highway)
site adjacencies
scale comparisons
shade studies
early concept schemes
our preferred scheme with a central grove, a garden plaza, a large surface water feature, and a retail pavilion
"the chandelier" - lighting concept for the retail street
"the chandelier" - fringe-like overhead lights in 20'-30' intervals along the retail street
materials plan for current scope of work
planting plan for current scope of work
With: Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture
Role: Primary Designer, 2015-2017
Location: Hamilton College, Clinton Hill, NY
This master plan for a new student life quad and health center at Hamilton College tasked us with working tightly within existing conditions, as much of the site was built only a couple of years ago. We designed a circulation system that would bridge the north and south areas of campus and would be characterized by canopy planting.
My role in this project was to create all of the drawings, from masterplan through construction documents, including illustrative views and sections. I participated in site visits, meetings, conference calls during design, and am now working on construction administration. The project entered construction in June 2017.
aerial rendering of proposed design meeting existing landscape conditions
the grading plan shows half-foot contours as the design is complex yet subtle
existing and proposed site sections show the removal of a dormitory to make way for open landscape with canopy
planting and landform vignette of positive forms
planting and landscape vignette of depressions
planting and landscape vignette of slopes
With: Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects
Role: Designer, 2014
Location: Northwest Michigan Botanic Garden, Traverse City, MI
The Secret Garden is a 1050 square foot space enclosed on two sides with existing stone walls - remnants from a former building on site. A mature Chinese Chestnut has been preserved as a focal point and a part of the site's history. The main factors of the design are: a 6.5 foot tall evergreen hedge to close off the two open sides of the site; a circuitous stone path; a water rill that snakes alongside the path; shrubbery; perennials; and ferns. There is an option for the vegetation to be globular, like bowling ball boxwoods and alliums, and an option for it to be spiky, like arborvitae spires and veronicastrum.
A tall stand of shrubbery obscures views of the garden from the entryway lending to an atmosphere of mystery and playfulness.
GSD 1211 Core Studio, Fall 2011
Prof Pierre Belanger
Team: Alexander Arroyo and Jeongmin Yu
In this studio we were assigned to groups of three and asked to envision the landscape of the Massachusetts Military Reservation (on Cape Cod) as a dual, urban infrastructure that comprises military operations, ecological services and social networks. The three objectives of the project brief were carbon footprint reduction, ecological process optimization, and co-programming of civilian and military operations. The brief emphasized the consideration of a strategy that responds to the legacy and future of America's defense imperatives. Alexander, Jeongmin and I focused on the role of the US Coast Guard in strategically choreographing the logistical and biophysical flows of marine ecologies and economies.
SUBMERGED TOPOGRAPHIES: Pressurized by local, regional, and global forces of climate change and urbanization, the Coast Guard will concresce threatened and emerging ecologies and economies under a single project– an “urban ocean”– that engages the northward migration of marine biota through marshaling coastal conditions and inland territory to optimize and sustain those same compromised marine systems while adapting the USCG to those emerging conditions that constitute its new ground of operations across salt and freshwater systems. Transecting the MMR along the saline gradient from Cape Cod Bay to Nantucket Sound yields three sites of intervention through which the urban ocean may be maximally impacted: "saline invasion", "nutrient reloading", and "urban ocean".
OCEANIC ORTHOGRAPHICS: The ocean is urban. the MMR, an island of freshwater in that ocean, is striated by oceanic vectors of urbanization, patterned through its interior by the logistical and biophysical flows of marine ecologies and economies. the US Coast Guard positions at Air Station Cape Cod, Woods Hole, and Cape Cod Canal are uniquely postured through expanding site presence and emerging mission imperatives to strategically choreograph these flows by modulating exchanges between marine and terrestrial hydrologies, reprogramming the saline gradient to manage and evolve aquatic systems by instrumentalizing processes of urbanization for ecological and economic productivity that in turn shepherd urban morphologies on both land and sea.
TRANSECTING THE INTERIOR: The Cape's layered surfaces are subdivided into grids of analysis, exploitation and management through which its ecological, biophysical, and cultural economies may be choreographed. These grids extend through Cape Cod and terrestrial urban areas, and must be understood in terms of the gradients they cross rather than through conventional boundaries; accordingly, Cape Cod, as an island of urban freshwater floating in and dependent on an urbanized ocean, must be understood in relation to surrounding saline systems. Inland processes of urbanization significantly impact regional marine ecologies and economies, as is already evidenced by groundwater contamination, nutrient loading, and saltwater intrusion. Managing these effects, already among the Coast Guard's dominant missions, expands the USCG's operational purview to engage the shifting territories of coastal defense and marine management.
NUTRIENT RELOADING
URBAN X OCEAN (drawing by Alex Arroyo)
SALINE INVASION (drawing by Jeongmin Yu)
MARINE MOBILITIES & CHOREOGRAPHING ENFORECMENT (drawing by all)
GSD 1212 Core Studio, Spring 2012
Profs Chris Reed and Gary Hilderbrand
This project, treated as an epidemiological study of a toxic landscape, proposes the successional remediation and evolution of Willets Point, Queens into an infrastructural biomass matrix that responds to contaminants in the ground, water, and air while restructuring its urban form into a live-work network dominated by automotive industry. The three surficial operations leading to the transformation of the site both topographically and epidemiologically are capping, draining and planting; capping is indicated by buildings, draining is indicated by channels and swales, and planting is indicated by phytoremediative tree and grass species. ToxiCITY is constructed from a set of codes based on ecological site factors including hydrology, topography, wind patterns, and sun paths.
GSD 1211 Topography Workshop, Fall 2011
Profs Pierre Belanger and David Mah
Team: Alexander Arroyo and Jeongmin Yu
This series of models was produced over the course of the semester. Our concept was submerged topographies - land frequently inundated by water so that it is somewhere in between bathymetry and topography. We used 3D modeling and parametric software (Rhino + Grasshopper) to produce digital models, and learned Mastercam in order to mill the physical representations out of foam.
The surface, as a topographically extruded wave diffraction pattern, may be manipulated through its internal logic - the wave itself. However, when applied to existing topography, the complexity of wave diffraction will likely never produce a surface that resembles an abstracted diagram of the process. Rather, when considered as a groundwork operation, strategic manipulations (grading and rilling ) interact with wave forces to modulate transfers of energy and material. The estuary is a system of "mixed energy" - a flux of marine (tidal, wave) and riverine energies - and as such, must be considered from both fluid vectors. Accordingly, by differentially "energizing" existing landform through the wave, emergent topographies - both terrestrial and fluid - may be produced with simple logical and engineering techniques. (Arroyo)
