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SMP by Mike Dahl, LASN
Summer/Murphy & Partners, Inc. is a creative, full service and budget conscious professional landscape planning firm with over 50 years of experience in the business having started in 1964 in West Covina, California and moving south to the coastal town of Dana Point five years later. With a team of 26 professionals, 10 of which are licensed landscape architects, six principal designers and a practiced irrigation design team, their experience includes master planned community design, commercial design, recreational/golf course, resort, hospitality design and residential design, which is about 50% to 60% of their business. The role of SMP has evolved and expanded over time, calling on them to research, innovate and apply new technologies and changing trends to the design process. Their goal is that the landscape planning component enriches both the beauty, lifestyle and value of the overall project with designs that exist to be seen and enjoyed, to invite and connect, to enliven and sustain, which result through researching, developing and implementing smart, sustainable and saleable solutions that address lifestyle, climate and the land. After receiving four submissions from the firm which exemplified maximum use of somewhat small residences, LASN interviewed three of the main people in the firm: Pat Murphy, the president and a partner, Rick Hagemeyer, the director of design and V.P. and Mike Mann, a principal, to gather insight into how they achieve their dynamic results. Interconnectivity "The design develops itself throughout the whole space rather than being sectionalized," says Hagemeyer. "We often address this in a way that brings the interior out so you don't necessarily think of it as: my inside home, and my yard, because by thinking of it in that way, the yard becomes small in your mind. So what we do is we try to create that seamless edge between the interior and the exterior space so now it's not inside/outside, it is one whole cohesive experience." "Our philosophy has always been to maximize what space is available based on how the house is plotted," Murphy states. "Often times the developer looks to us to even situate the home and we do that in such a way that it allows us the best opportunity to create expanded spaces outside." The techniques that SMP employs to bring the interior space out, and conversely, bring the exterior space in, include careful choice of materials, maximizing the amount of visibility and accessibility in and out, and, working closely with the architect and the interior decorator, theming the exterior with the interior so it looks like a unified design. "Builders will attest that 'any time you can make my home feel bigger, you are doing me a favor,'" Hagemeyer declares. Three Principles of Design The first tenet, according to Hagemeyer, is the psychology of the space. "It's not just what you see but how you feel in the space," he asserts. "So by making the space feel good it doesn't matter how big it is, it doesn't really matter everything you are trying to stuff in there." The firm focuses lots of attention on components in nature that humans have historically relied on - so much so that it is in our DNA - to be comfortable in our surroundings: components that provide privacy, protection, views, visibility and a sense of defensibility. "Why is that you feel good under the shade of a tree?" Hagemeyer asks rhetorically. "Why is that you feel good under an overhead structure? Why is it that we feel so good around water and plants? It's because it relates back to what we needed as humans for sustenance."
As seen in LASN magazine, February 2020.
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