Walking through a Stoneyard

Some sights from my half day walk through David Hochstetler’s layout a few days ago. New sandstone, old sandstone. Rescued sandstone curbing and walkways. Gate post galore. Great old troughs, and more. Creative Touch Landscape Supply is located on Kidron rd. Just north of Kidron, Ohio. Or just south of Ohio SR30. If you stop […]

John Wall’s New $4.9 Million House

Why in the hell would I post a story about a rich NBA star buying a near $5 million dollar house in Maryland Well, this is why — Please look at the paving around, for what I am assuming is the hot-tub. Take a close look. completely unacceptable! I would never put paving around a […]

Peter Schaudt Favorite Chicago Places

Checking my Google alerts for landscape architecture I came across this article in Chicago Business about Landscape Architect Peter Schaudt and his favorite designed spaces in the great city of Chiccago. It’s a terrific list with great information and insight into these spaces and this now makes this list sort of a must-see for any of us […]

Professor’s Illegal Mountain Atop Building in Beijing

This story is everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Crazy acupuncturist builds a mountain villa on his apartment complex and he neglects to tell anyone about it. It’s like something you’d see in a Bond movie. Crazy mad-man villain sitting atop his stronghold in a fortified mountain villa, all the while drinking a ’56 Dom Perignon […]

German Baroque Water Park Makes Splash

From the Article, and links(link to park website) to the sight ::: With its Hercules statue towering above a massive water cascade, romantic gardens and castle, Germanys Bergpark Wilhelmshoehe has long been a marvel of baroque landscape design. As of last month, its also a UNESCO world heritage site. More from the article ::: The […]

Spring Awakening | Dwell

A really great article in Dwell about this really well designed space in San Francisco, it worth a look for a few more pics and the res of the short article. Really well done. SPRING AWAKENING A landscape architect in San Francisco harnesses an underground water source to create a lush marshland in his own […]

My Pots, in the Winter Snow

The big snow we are getting today called me to action, grabbing the camera kind of action. Julie likes to refer to the pot on the left as the flying saucer. Add on the snow and I now believe it looks somewhat alien in appearance. I’d like to add that the flying saucer brings great […]

Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Park

I was absolutely riveted by this perspective for a memorial park for earthquake victims in China’s Northern city of Tangshan the park will be called Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Park. I can’t say it enough . . . this conceptual really strikes me as something very powerful and thought provoking. The architects for the project are […]

Now Take a Look at this Wall

Now this is a wall, this is a thing of beauty, this is real, real stone . . . not some concrete product from a mold. Briar Hill How could anyone in our profession not appreciate this? How could you not fight tooth and nail to have this installed over some product from the latest […]

High End Outdoor Theatre

Now here’s a outdoor home theatre almost no one can afford. However if you find a client that can afford this system, I’d say they’re a keeper. We need the right context to spec something like this: Here’s some of the description of the product. Rising from within this video tower is the custom built […]

My 1st Briar Hill Stone Steps

Here they are, big beautiful Briar Hill Stone steps. If memory serves(and it may very well not), this is a slide I took around ’88-’90. Part of a larger construction job we had installed in the early 80’s. Thinking more about it, I’m pretty sure very late ’81, or early in ’82 was the time […]

Green, and all it’s Shades

A little something from my looking at the color green. One of those days when I was just trying to get my mind right to start working on a drawing. Foliage Fooling around on something like this reminds me again, why more designers need to look at foliage and not just the color of the […]

From the Sketchbook (9)

This was drawn right on site. I was interested in getting down my initial thought for the driveway and possible parking spots. The reason for all the squares for the paving is that I was either stuck on something, or I just kept drawing squares as I was daydreaming about the project. I’ve noticed that […]

Long Ago Design (2)

While looking for a drawing to do a comparative analysis I found this interesting conceptual design. What I have is something very loose and “natural” on the right as opposed to something very geometric in design on the left. The Drawing The idea was giving the client a chance to look at completely opposite ideas […]

From the sketchbook (sorta’)

This was from the sketchbook(moleskine), and was done on-site so I could show the contractor what I was thinking about in reference to the space. The idea for the space was to add a waterfall and a small body of water right up near the pool’s edge. The drawing in black and white was good […]