The Residential Issue of Landscape Architect & Specifier News saw many firms submit their projects for feature consideration. This project was not chosen for a Feature in the issue, but we at LandscapeArchitect.com thought the project deserved to be showcased online . . .

In historic 'Valley Town', enclosed by the Niagara escarpment, the Landscape Architect transformed a personal garden and Passive House into an emotive and educational experience for their family and community.

 

Using Vitruvian architectural principles of firmitas (firmness), utilitas (commodity), and venustas (delight), modern home and garden form an environmental response to creating a sense of place. The former, firmitas, relates to the integrity of materials, durability, and physical performance of the landscape. Indeed, to be pertinent for sustainable contemporary living, integrity must include building and landscape in a comprehensive and interconnected approach. Through the use of timeless materials, implementation of green-roof systems, and other water conservation strategies, the Landscape Architect carefully considered structure with infrastructure. On site, existing black walnut trees were harvested, locally milled, and incorporated into interior details of the residence becoming windowsills, stair treads, and items for daily use. Repurposed and robust materials such as regionally sourced granite and century-old barn wood from owner's family farm, ensuring a lasting, resource-conscious construction. The driveway, walkways, and terraces are permeable, hosting a variety of green technologies and infrastructure beneath, including underground tanks, dry wells, and bio swales - not a drop of stormwater leaves the property. While these conservation and sustainable strategies are largely invisible to those who pass on the street, the second and third principles of commodity and delight have inspired conversation in the community and even impromptu tours led by homeowners - educating and promoting small resilient, integral sites - firmitas.

Utilitas, the second principle, refers to spatial accommodation, function, or usefulness. Adjacent to the Passive House, the garden responds to building form through provision of entry, passage, and place. This ceremony of pilgrimage, delineated by corten-steel features and subtle material transitions from refined to rustic, recreates native ecosystems with plantings and boulders that reflect the nearby Niagara Escarpment. The entry subverts a traditional front lawn for a mixed woodland. Cultivating wilderness in urban surroundings, this micro-forest provides a provocative entry stimulating conversation about heat-island effects, accessibility to nature, and connection to health and well-being. Each day people stop, observe, and, if owners are present, are invited to explore the green space that reaches out onto the street and uplifts the community. From entry woodland, passage to the backyard occurs through a meadow of fine fescue. The wavering pathway, designed to embody da Vinci's principle of sfumato, blurs edges and incorporates salvaged materials in "a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty." This emotive election of self-awareness terminates at the corten-steel moon gate - a portal to the backyard and symbol of transformation, where kitchen garden, teahouse, and dining terrace are located. Utitlitas, the functional arrangement of spaces, demonstrates a deep understanding of not only visual and physical elements, but an intellectual progression of self-actualization enhanced by venustas - delight.

The Vitriuvian principle of venustas speaks to beauty and aesthetic will of the designer. This garden's beauty, and in the case of the landscape architect, exists in details and subtle references to family heritage and their travels around the world. Corten-steel edger at the street, serpentine fence and gate, as well as moon-gate, celebrate Asian garden traditions. A teahouse or garden shed with a door handle and salvaged barn wood connect to owner's upbringing on an apple farm. Throughout the garden, native and non-native plantings combine responding to alelleopathic conditions from black walnut trees and celebrating family favorites such as prostrate Japanese maple and specimen pines gifted from friends and colleagues.

Seldom do professionals have the opportunity to invest in the creation of their own living environments - to care about both firmitas and utilitas - with a venustas that can be shared with the entire community. To create a home and a garden for our families and neighbors is an act of care - and in caring for our environments and curating a sense of place we impart a cultural distinctiveness that transforms and uplifts evolving towns and cities for the 21st century.

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