design for the people
We are committed to designing for a diverse society and have been careful to structure our practice in a way that allows us to reach beyond affluent private clients. A large part of our work is for public schools, public universities and affordable housing projects in neighborhoods spread across New York City and New York State. We recognize that design in this realm often requires that you must make the most of fewer resources and buildings and landscapes need to be durable and designed to thrive with limited maintenance.
When considering residential design, there is a large middle class swath of society that has little access to architects and good design who cannot afford to hire an architect to design a house or garden and earn too much to qualify for public projects. We continually strive to devise work processes that allow our design services to be affordable so that all segments of society can enjoy good design.
We have designed several landscapes for public schools in the city on a pro bono basis as well as embodying educational opportunities in school landscapes by including vegetable gardens, native pollinator gardens, outdoor classrooms and creative play spaces. We have taken part in teaching children about their relationship to natural processes through outreach programs that link gardening, food production, food preparation, plant and animal fiber use and natural dyeing.
On a different note, design also has a responsibility to the larger society when it impacts the public realm. This includes public projects and also privately owned projects fronting on public streets that form a part of the urban fabric of a city or town. We take great care to be good stewards of the public realm by respecting the character of the wider context .