GroundView

HAWKEN UPPER SCHOOL
GATES MILLS, OH
2014

GV is working with Westlake Reed Leskosky to implement a master plan for the redesign of this private school campus outside of Cleveland. The school overlooks a twenty acre field that GV’s plan will gradually convert to native grass meadow. A new entry road is pulled away from buildings to create a campus uniquely unencumbered by vehicular infrastructure. Student drop-off will be moved to a new one-hundred tree orchard. Pedestrian paths cut through the meadow to connect campus buildings and frame views to woodlands beyond.

architecture: Westlake Reed Leskosky (Jonathan Kurtz)

Cleveland Plain Dealer

PUERTO RICAN VETERAN’S MEMORIAL
BOSTON, MA
2013

GV was privileged to collaborate with sculptor Robert Shure on the design of the nation’s first permanent memorial specifically honoring Puerto Rican men and women who served in America’s military. The new landscape takes cues from the axis and masonry of the Holy Cross Cathedral, just across the street from the Memorial in Boston’s South End. GV designed the landscape to adapt to solemn occasions and informal everyday use. The plant palette favors broadleaf evergreens and recalls the lushness of a subtropical garden.

artist: Skylight Studios

OLVER TRANSIT CENTER
GREENFIELD, MA
2012

GV’s design for the zero-net Olver Transit Center exemplifies a shift in the role of twenty-first century urban landscapes in which energy neutrality is not enough and the landscape becomes the site of energy production. GV helped situate a 7,300-square-foot photovoltaic array, south of what will become a native beech forest. A clearing within this plantation contains two cells of a bioretention system that capture and filter storm water while supporting native sedges and irises.

Boston Society of Architects Honor Award

architect: Charles Rose Architects
civil engineer: Nitsch Engineering
mechanical engineer: Arup

SIMON GARDEN
OBERLIN COLLEGE CONSERVATORY
OBERLIN, OH
2010

Two rare witch hazel tree cultivars animate this small, glass-enclosed, open-air, rooftop “terrarium,” a component of GV’s landscape for the Conservatory. The trees bloom during the snow of late February. Ephemeral wildflowers and hundreds of crosscut square tubes of aluminum pattern the ground plane and act as containers for patches of hypnum moss.

Boston Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award
Society for College and University Planning Honor Award

artist: AfterAll (Joanna Bean)