Landscape Architect in Architecture Office

[Matthew Latham]

I’m a landscape architect working in an architecture firm, and I’d like to hear especially from those in the same type of arrangement.  How does the relationship work?  Do you go after stand-alone landscape architecture projects, or is the primary source of work the architecture projects the firm is working on?  If you market LA services, who do you market to (generally)?  (A lot of times other architecture firms are hesitant to use another architecture firm for LA work.)  How much of a voice do you have in early stages of site planning?  I don’t know of many people in this type of arrangement so I’d like to get some perspective on things.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I’m not in an architecture office, but  have worked as the sole LA in two different local civil engineering offices. We did not market landscape architecture in a very visible way because other LAs liked to stay with surveyors and engineers that did not have an LA.

I did do some design work for some landscape contractors and architects on projects that we did not do the engineering on. When that happened, I used the others title block and had our company name very low key under my name on my signature line in order to not ruffle feathers of the others … it did not do much to market, but it helped get those individual jobs. We thought about creating a separate name for LA work, but that is as far as it got.

 

[Dennis J. Jarrard, PLA, CLARB]

I work for a medium size A/E firm with muliple office around the country and am in a similar role.  However, I am the Senior Site Planner for the office.  I wear many hats at once it seems.  I generate all of the initial site plans / feasiblity studies for projects produced from our office.  Once the project becomes “real” I also have been providing the landscape design for those projects in the Chicago office, as well as, other offices we have in the country where they do not have an L.A. on staff.  I also have the benefit of one other L.A. in our Los Angeles office to bounce ideas off…or comiserate with!  We have a lot of LA’s on staff but they are no longer working in traditional LA roles.  I actually enjoy desiging and creating where they would rather be report writing and putting out fires on a constant basis depending on their position. 

 

I seem to have a good working relationship with the engineers and architects.  It might be a virtue of my personality.  I think a lot of times if you are new to an office it just takes time for others to warm up to you, yours skills and abilities.

 

I have often wanted to chase other LA work, but due to the sheer volume of work I have being generated by our existing commercial clients has rendered that nearly impossible.  I also find our firm structure to not be the most conducive for chasing some landscape design work.  I have worked in small offices doing high end residential work but the business model for doing that work and the type of work our office does don’t seem to mesh.  Doing high end residential work is very hands on from inception to completion, whereas, the type of commercial work our firm does is somewhat removed from the hand holding phase.  Our firm also does not market Landscape Architecture services.  If I ever find the time to market our LA services I think I would focus my energies on offices such as civil engineers or architecture offices that don’t offer the service at all.  I have established working relationships with other firms and would try to work that angle for additional work.

 

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