[Katherine Jacobs]

Thank you both for sharing your thoughts and experiences! It sounds like both of you sell work by being good designers and good at communicating the value of your designs, and I am comfortable with my abilities/potential in those arenas. There’s hope for me yet!

[Katherine Jacobs]

Thank you so much for your reply, Andrew. I’m curious, is your experience in a residential design/build setting? I’m trying to understand how roles differ in different kinds of business structures. 

In the company I currently work for, the owner understands our role as sales staff. There is considerable pressure on the sales staff to sign now and build tomorrow. The senior LA I work under is a remarkably talented salesman, but in this workflow there is very little time for him to do any thoughtful designing. 

I’m curious to hear whether designers are asked to take on this kind of role in other residential design/build firm, or if this is unique to my current employer.

[Katherine Jacobs]

Thanks for your response, Andrew!

There are 8-10 steps going up to the property. Our crew typically puts a piece of plywood over the stairs to create a ramp, which avoids the back injury issue. It’s still a big pain in the butt and takes more time, which increases costs.

We need to raise the level 6″-12″ in different places, so typically we would import cheap fill for the first few inches and top it off with a few inches of higher quality soil for the sod. In this case, I’m imagining we could use a few inches of some super-lightweight material, mix it with the top layer of native soil for drainage, and then top it off with topsoil as usual.

I generally like to avoid peat moss since it’s not renewable, but I appreciate the suggestion- it might be a good material to use in this case.

[Katherine Jacobs]

I appreciate hearing your feedback, but you are responding to an image rather than a full presentation- of course the design doesn’t make sense without having all the information!

If you are interested:

It’s a “food forest”/edible landscape, which makes access by wheelbarrows extremely important to the design– I think that’s why you read the circulation so strongly. That also probably reads particularly strongly because you happen to be looking at a plan.

The edible design intent is also why the design seems in this graphic to feel like there is a lot of “stuff.” One of the design goals is to provide a variety of food/medicine/herbs year round, which necessitated a more complex plant palate.

The ‘curly-Q thingys’ are fractal spirals, a formal response to the client’s interest in a “whimsical” feel (their word) and their interest in a metaphysical connection between humans, plants, landscape and the universe– fractals being a formal expression of a pattern, or underlying logic, that connects many species/natural processes. Of course they won’t experience the forms as fractals on the ground, but they view them as such from their 2nd floor kitchen window, which looks down over the space.

-And as you can see from the graphic I posted, I’m pretty bad at graphics.

[Katherine Jacobs]

Thanks, both of you! I’ve used aerial images with the opacity reduced before, but I’m having trouble getting an image that is high enough resolution to make a cutting edge along the tree line that isn’t pixelated. When the site edge is straight, along a property line or a building, the quality of the images I got from google earth hasn’t been as much of an issue.

Any ideas on how to create an edge that doesn’t suck with 72dpi?

[Katherine Jacobs]

Hah, I knew those existed but didn’t know what they were called. Thanks!

[Katherine Jacobs]

I am finishing my MLA this year. While I deeply value everything I have gained from my education, I do wonder if I might have been able to pursue an equally satisfying career in a similar field that has more funding available for graduate students. If your disposition is amenable to linear thinking, I encourage you to explore some of the sciences that are related to LA, or perhaps business. You would be an asset to the field as an expert in a related field with a sympathy to and background in LA.

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