Artist’s Backyard

A university selected a prominent but neglected area of their campus to install a multi-phased design-build transforming “left-over” space into a nexus of beauty, activity, and engagement. The project was multi-phased and interdisciplinary and involved many people working over the course of several years in collaboration with the university’s horticulture and meteorology departments, university housing, student affairs, university architects, and grounds management, among others.

I wore many hats working on The Artists’ Backyard—from running meetings and leading teams, to schematic design and design development, to construction documents, mixing concrete, installing boulders, and wrangling teams of colleagues and workers. However, my primary role was to design, procure, and install an exceptional woodland under-story planting, which incorporated an intermittent stream and rain garden basin. The result won North Carolina’s 2015 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Community Appearance. A picture of the transformed space is shown below.