Spurlock Poirier Landscape Architects
San Diego

“Placemaking takes passion,” says Spurlock Poirier Landscape Architects. “The difference between a good space and a great one is a matter of the heart, not just the mind or the eye.” The firm advocates a site-conditioned approach and believes people deserve great spaces, environments that really matter to them and touch them, however subtly or deeply. This conviction infuses their collaborative design work. The firm has four principals and a staff of eight.

University of California, San Diego Academic Court
Site design for the main open space of the Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering in the Warren College neighborhood at UCSD followed on the earlier Spurlock Poirier academic court master plan, creating an open space that serves as the hub of pedestrian circulation, while also providing outdoor gathering spaces for student and faculty interaction. The courtyard holds artist Tim Hawkinson’s intriguing sculpture (“Bear”) of massive granite boulders. Spurlock Poirier was engaged as the landscape architect for the three surrounding academic buildings: Powell-Focht Bioengineering, Computer Science, and Cal IT2.

Ottosen Entry Garden, Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden
The entry garden immediately engages visitors with the drama and visceral sensory enjoyment of the desert. The form is rectilinear, contrasting with the rest of the free-form, 80-acre site and establishing a sense of place in the larger landscape. The entry garden implements the first phase of the 20-year physical master plan, also prepared by SPLA in 2008.

Getty Lower Central Garden, Los Angeles
Spurlock Poirier was the prime consultant for the three-acre central garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The firm supported the design work of artist Robert Irwin in creating a place that celebrates the rich garden tradition of strolling and viewing remarkable plants, earthforms and vistas. The garden design features a natural ravine and tree-lined walkway that leads through an extraordinary experience of sights, sounds and scents. Irwin’s statement, “Always changing, never twice the same,” is carved into the plaza floor, reminding visitors of the ever-changing nature of this living work of art.

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