Reply To: If you had unlimited start-up capital what kind of firm would you start

[Thomas J. Johnson]

hhhhmmmm… that’s fun to think about…

My head is all over the place so my ideal set-up would be a mad-scientist type workshop. Part art studio, part wood-shop, part metal fabrication, part design/drafting, part patent office. Sometimes I’d design landscapes, sometimes tools, other times truck bumpers…sculpture, furniture… I find inspiration all over the place and would like to be able to pursue those ideas… if the idea sticks, I’d like to patent it and bring it to market… I’d like to make gobs of money having fun designing cool sh-tuff. I’d like people to come to me and say, “Tom, I’ve got this problem…” or “I need you to design this…”

I still love landscape architecture, since it started me down this path of discovery, but I see the potential for greater design freedom and profitability beyond the typical landscape design studio… I’ve become more interested in technical/product/industrial design as related to everyday experience. One of my gifts and curses is that I see problems (and solutions) all over the place. I’d like to design everything and not be pigeon holed as this or that type of designer. As New Belgium Brewery says, “Follow Your Folly”…

I see an old barn/mill/manufacturing type space…wood, stone, concrete, steel… big doors that slide open to let in the sunshine and breeze and encourage big stuff to be built (though we build little stuff too)… tall golden grass…a great gnarled tree… a natural woman with an easy smile who works with me, not for me, and who has interests of her own that I help her with… friends come and go (and respect that there are things they can’t see-prototypes)… it’s a small outfit, maybe just two plus a couple little ones, if we’re lucky… there’s a great network of similarly minded and passionate people who we collaborate with… a close knit community of artisans without pretense… that’s what I see… oh, and we also do regionally appropriate landscape designs using local materials and native/adapted species that will blow your mind…