LPA, Inc.
San Diego

LPA, Inc. is a top green design firm known throughout California since the 1980s for sustainable design. With offices in San Diego, Roseville, and Irvine, the firm provides landscape architecture, architecture, planning, interior design, engineering and graphics services. LPA designs K-12 schools, colleges and universities, corporate, civic and retail establishments, with an emphasis on sustainability, function, simplicity, low maintenance and beauty. Innovative irrigation systems, water harvesting and drought-tolerant/native plants are fundamental to their approach. More than 400 design awards attest to LPA’s work, including the California Council of American Institute of Architects “Firm Award,” recognizing more than 25 years of design excellence.

Cuyamaca College Student Center, El Cajon, Calif.
The Cuyamaca College Student Center landscape design begins with the celebration of rainfall. Stormwater collected from the roof is directed to a gutter that spills into a rain gauge that impounds and slowly releases the water. This element forms one side of an expansive student plaza with decorative concrete paving, sandblasted text and cast-in-place seatwalls. The plaza provides the college with a large exterior space for any type of campus event.

Cuyamaca College Business and Technology Building, El Cajon, Calif.
The Business and Technology Building at the top of campus was previously a wooded lot. The landscape design saved the Torrey pines and incorporated them into a drought-tolerant landscape that embraces the site topography. The buildings are built into the sloping site. The landscape is a series of terraces and slopes with gardens, stairs and built-in ramps. A small plaza atop the entrance and at the lower elevation creates social spaces for business students to enjoy the views and connect to their campus.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, designed for NASA features drought-tolerant and native plant materials, water-efficient landscape irrigation and high-efficiency drip irrigation on the auditorium’s green roof. The green roof insulates the auditorium, reduces noise and HVAC usage and costs, lessens the heat island effect (further minimizing HVAC usage), performs stormwater management and provides garden views for those on the upper floors. These features reduce the demand for potable water for irrigation by 80 percent, and helped JPL become NASA’s first completed LEED Gold facility.

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