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Development and Landscape Architecture03-17-15 | News

Development and Landscape Architecture

The well attended open session panel presentation on Thursday, March 12, 2015 at the LA Expo in Long Beach, Calif., presented (from left) Baxter Miller, ASLA, president of the Southern California ASLA Chapter, and owner of BMLA Landscape Architecture in Corona, Calif.; Tom Grable, division president, Southern California, TRI Pointe Homes; Jacob Atalla, vice president for sustainability initiatives at KB Home; and Randy Jackson, RLA, president of PlaceWorks, headquartered in Santa Ana, Calif. Sarah Sutton, ASLA, principal at PlaceWorks (Berkeley office), was the moderator.

The panel discussion at the LA Expo in Long Beach, Calif., Thursday, March 12, 2015, presented two landscape architects and two developers discussing how housing developers and landscape architecture are and can work together in greater Southern California, and the elements both are bringing to new community development.

Baxter Miller, ASLA, owner of BMLA Landscape Architecture in Corona, Calif., said the challenge for landscape architects was to deliver affordable designs for communities. He noted it's important to design walkable communities, and rethink the designs of our downtowns. He expressed his excitement for the continuing development of "performance-based metrics" in landscape architecture, by which the profession is able to substantiate its environmental and sustainable designs elements to clients. He noted his firm has typically recruited from area colleges and universities, but is now broadening its outreach, commenting that a recent trip to LSU to speak with students in that program was eye opening.

Tom Grable, the Southern California division president for TRI Pointe Homes, explained that TRI, only in its sixth year of business, last year built 400 homes. Grable described TRI as a "retailer merchandizing lifestyle" to the 76 million Millennial market, which he notes is "a force to be reckoned with." New designs to reach that market is TRI's mantra. Grable said TRI works closely with architects and landscape architects to create "outdoor in, and indoor out" designs, and sustainable landscapes. His advice to young designers is to understand costs.

Jacob Atalla, vice president for sustainability initiatives at KB Home, noted the importance of building and selling homes at the "right price," while constructing energy-efficient homes and water wise landscapes. He emphasized water conservation, asserting that 40 of the 50 states will experience water shortages, not because of drought, but lack of water conservancy. He alerted attendees to "RESNET" (residential energy services network), a nonprofit national standards making body that has a committee developing a water efficiency rating system that will allow homebuyers to know how efficiently water is being used in homes they are considering to buy. RESNET says these standards will let homebuilders "monetize the efficiency of their homes" in the same fashion the HERS (Home Energy Rating System) index does for energy efficiency.

Editor's note: Just read that KB Home's Houston team relocated three 60-year-old live oak trees during the construction of its Cimarron Creek communities in Magnolia, Texas, with the help of landscape architects, an environmental design firm and Trees For Houston.

Randy Jackson, RLA, president of PlaceWorks, recalled that landscape architects used to be called in at the end of a housing development to make it look better. Now, he said, LAs are called in first. He observed that LAs used to be generalists, then became more specialized. "LAs need to go back to a holistic, generalized approach to see the project broadly," he said. He sees the coming together of the older generation of LAs and Millennial LAs as a "dynamic duo."