scape

SCAPE / LANDSCAPEARCHITECTURE PLLC

QUALIFICATIONS

SCAPE / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PLLC

v

WHAT WE DO

SCAPE is a dynamic, leading-edge landscape architec-

ture and urban design studio based in New York City. We are committed to

the innovative, creative design and construction of the joint urban-natural

environment. Our goal is to create and organize dialogue about the built

environment, to refine the definition of the public sector to include natural

processes and wildlife habitat, and to cultivate an ethos of civic participa-

tion. Within this expanded mandate, our ‘design output’ takes many forms:

research, teaching, writing, built landscapes, websites, maps, documenta-

tions, and temporary installations.

The studio is comprised of 7 professionals with diverse

backgrounds in landscape architecture, urban design, and planning. We

work across and in-between disciplines of science and design to merge

design expertise with plant ecology, forest ecology, and hydrology, towards

a synthetic, sustainable approach to the design and management of the

urban landscape. Our approach is to understand and enhance connections

between ecological systems and public infrastructures to create dynamic

environments in concert with long-term, phased strategies for their imple-

mentation. We have a particular expertise in bridging concept and construc-

tion, and have developed a reputation for large scale conceptual landscape

strategy alongside the design and material detailing of landscape elements.

SCAPE works in close collaboration with some of the

world’s leading architects, engineers, artists and ecologists including the

Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Studio Gang,

Smith Miller & Hawkinson, Grimshaw Architects, REX-Architecture PC, EN-

NEAD Architects, ARUP, Langan Engineering, HNTB, and Dr. Steven Handel.

Current projects include the construction of the Battery

Park City Community Center in lower Manhattan, a streetscape in Buffalo, an

environmental center in Greenville, SC, a private residence in Rhinebeck, and

many city projects such as libraries and cultural centers.

The work of Kate Orff and SCAPE has been recognized

with National and Local awards including 2010 and 2008 National ASLA

Award, a Progressive Architecture Award, and several NYC Design Commis-

sion Awards of Excellence. Our work has been published and exhibited inter-

nationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Seoul Design

Olympiad, Hong Kong/Shenzhen Biennales, and Lisbon Triennials.

Our Clients Include:

Private Developers

National Equities Company

Lockes Properties

Vornado Realty Trust

Public Entities

BAM Local Development Corporation

Battery Park City Authority

Chicago Department of Environment

Fingal County Council, Ireland

New Jersey Department of the Treasury

New York Hall of Science

New York City Audubon Society

New York City Department of Transportation

New York City Department of Design + Construction

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

New York City Fire Department

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Institutions

Abraham Joshua Heschel School

Caltech University

Cornell University

Columbia University

Bard College

State University of New York

Architects and Collaborators

Atelier Pagnamenta Torriani

Charles Rose Architects

Clive Wilkinson Architects

Dean/Wolf Architects

Diller, Scofidio and Renfro

ENNEAD Architects

(formerly Polshek Partnership Architects)

Gluckman Mayner Architects

Grafton Architects

Grimshaw Architects

Gruzen Samton Architects

Hanrahan Meyers Architects

Marble Fairbanks

nArchitects

OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture)

REX Architecture PC

Rockwell Group

Smith-Miller+Hawkinson Architects

Skidmore Owings & Merrill

STUDIO / GANG / Architects

TEN Arquitectos/ Enrique Norten

SCAPE / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PLLCSCAPE / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PLLC

Because nature is a design issue. It is increasingly dif-

ficult to talk about landscape architecture as a design discipline outside the

expanded context of ‘environment.’ Although environmental change is as old

as the earth itself, the recent acceleration, scale and intensity of change due

to human intervention has created something brand new. We wake up every

day to a world that has been made, not found; to an engineered globe. A

recent headline in the New York Times1 stated, “Forget Nature: Even Eden

is Engineered.” In the article, a series of satellite images provided evidence

that the composition of the earth’s climate air, water, and terrestrial systems

is beginning to depart significantly from the patterns of the past. In light of

these conditions, we as designers might start conceptualizing nature and city

together as a totally engineered condition, and begin to approach more com-

prehensively from a design standpoint the issue of land settlement. Certainly

designers didn’t get us into this condition of global degradation; but, through

a joint landscape-architectural approach to the built environment, we can at

least participate more actively in getting out of it.

Imagining a city as an environmental system can provide

an alternative to strictly formal, economic, or aesthetic attitudes towards

urbanism. It can generate a critical, participatory effect, and help envision

new, local ways of intervening in city fabric. Wetlands, riverbeds, drainage

patterns, bird nesting grounds, may be the starting point for a fresh, from-

the-ground up attitude towards development decisions. Landscape recast

as urban ecology can begin to (or continue to – think Love Canal) draw

connections between public health and the quality of the environment, and

move out of the realm of ‘pure’ design to influence larger political and de-

velopment decisions.

1. Andrew Revkin, “MANAGING PLANET EARTH;

Forget Nature. Even Eden Is Engineered” The New

York Times, August 20, 2002

WHY WE DO IT


ELENA BRESCIA, Partner

Elena Brescia has been designing and constructing

landscapes in the New York metropolitan region since 1989. Her role is to

advance ideas throughout the design process from concept to built form,

and she has a reputation for thoroughness, attention to detail, and quality

construction. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Fordham

University, earning the Sophocles Papanicolaou Award for Excellence in Art

History and Studio Art. She earned a Master of Landscape Architecture from

the University of Pennsylvania, at which time she received the ASLA Certifi-

cate of Honor.

Ms. Brescia has worked on local parks and private

estates of all sizes, bringing these projects from conceptual design through

construction documents. Work with Rogers Marvel Architects, PLLC, focused

on the streetscapes in the lower Manhattan community of Battery Park City,

a project that has received national design and planning awards from both

the AIA and ASLA.

Ms. Brescia has critical project organizational experience

when working with large teams of consultants, particularly with regard to

standards of work and guidelines for coordination and excels at bringing a

project from the schematic stage into documentation and construction.

Since September 11, 2001, Ms. Brescia has devoted

considerable time to the New York New Visions Coalition of Design Profes-

sionals, a pro-bono coalition of architecture, engineering, planning, and

design organizations. She serves on the Executive Committee, representing

the ASLANY Chapter, which participates in discussions with the LMDC, the

PANYNJ, and the MTA.

Service

2006 – Present Board of Directors Fine Arts Federation of New York

2005 – 2006 Board Member New York State Council of Landscape

Architects

2001 – Present Executive Committee New York New Visions

Coalition of Design Professionals

2000 – Present Executive Committee ASLA New York Chapter

Registration

Landscape Architect, New York, Illinois, Virginia

CLARB certified

WHO WE ARE

KATE ORFF, Partner

Kate Orff established the design studio SCAPE in 2004.

She is also an Assistant Professor at the Columbia University Graduate

School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, leading studios that inte-

grate the earth sciences into the design curriculum.

After graduating from the University of Virginia with

Distinction, Ms. Orff earned a Master in Landscape Architecture from the

Graduate School of Design at Harvard. She has worked on projects for many

prominent academic institutions and private clients that have been pub-

lished nationally and internationally. She trained for several years with the

landscape architecture and planning firm Hargreaves Associates and with

the Dutch architect/urbanist Rem Koolhaas at the Office for Metropolitan

Architecture, and founded the design office SCAPE in New York City shortly

thereafter.

Ms. Orff has built SCAPE’s reputation for design innova-

tion and has successfully maintained the highest quality landscape design

integrated within dynamic, open work processes with large, complex teams

of collaborating consultants. She has been nominated for several national

awards, including the RISD-Surface Magazine Emerging Designer, a national

award covering all design disciplines, was mentioned in the Special Issue

on Visionaries in Architecture and Design Dec 2005 in Metropolis Magazine,

and will be featured in ‘Upstarts’, an international series on global emerging

design firms by Archinect. Kate was also named one of “50 for the Future of

Design” 2007 Tastemakers by House and Garden Magazine, an award cov-

ering interior, industrial design, textiles, architecture and landscape. Dwell

Magazine selected her as a Dwell “Design Leader” in 2007.

Service

2004 – 2008 Member, Program Committee, Architectural League of

New York; Board Member, 2008

2007 AIA Steering Committee

2004 – 2005 Member, Design Advisory Group New Yorkers for Parks

(NY4P)

2005 – 2006 Design Fellow New York City Audubon Society

Registration

Landscape Architect, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey

South Carolina

CLARB certified

SELECTED PROJECTS


MILSTEIN HALLCORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, NY

Milstein Hall was conceived as an oppor-tunity to provide new amenities and interdisciplinary space for the Arts, Architecture and Planning departments at Cornell, currently located in separate buildings adjacent to the historic Arts Quad. As subconsultants to OMA Rotterdam and exectuive architects Kendall Heaton, our landscape architectural scope involves design services for an extensive roof garden, as well as the plaza at the base of the proposed building and connections back into the

campus fabric. During this process, SCAPE not only designed the planting, site and landscape scope, but also took over the design of the roof slope & drainage system, arriving at a solution that saved the project a great deal of money and met the architects’ desire to eliminate the need for a gutter system. 100% construc-tion documents were recently completed.

Quad

MILSTEIN HALL

GORGE

BIOSWALE - SMART EDGE

QUAD

Gorge


GORGE

SURVIVAL OF THE SUMAC: SUNKEN GARDEN

WATER STORAGE TANK

GREEN ROOF

LIVING WALL

SUNKEN GARDEN

PLAZA ABOVE

AVG ANNUAL RAINFALL IN ITHACA: 38.0”AVG RAINFALL IN A 1” RAIN EVENT: 0.623 GAL/SFAVG EXTENSIVE GREEN ROOF RAINWATER ABSORPTION IN A 1” RAIN EVENT: 0.450 GAL/SF

MILSTEIN GREEN ROOF SF: 24,025 SFTOTAL ABSORPTION IN A 1” RAIN EVENT: 10,811.25 GAL

QUAD

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

MILSTEIN HALL

Green Roof!

Living Wall!

Sunken Garden!

Plaza!


AUSTIN NICHOLSWAREHOUSEWILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN, NY

This project involves a massive renovation of an existing historical waterfront warehouse designed by Cass Gilbert, that is an icon on the East River waterfront. The scope includes the design of the adjacent waterfront pathway, shoreline restoration, and streetscapes, as well as two interior courtyard gardens and a 4,000 square foot rooftop deck. Inside the building, SCAPE has created a garden on the existing slab of the third floor. The deep floor slab of the warehouse will be cut out above this rectangular courtyard garden, which is conceived as a second boardwalk, floating above an undulating groundplane of low plantings with scattered groves of tall trees. The project also includes an intimate “water garden” on the second level, and a rooftop “beach” for sunning, socializing, playing, and enjoying views of the East River and Manhattan. This project, because of its complex waterfront location and planning requirements, has involved coordination with not only the project design team, but

extensive interaction and approvals processes with Federal, State, and City Agencies, including the US Army Corps of Engineers, the NY State DEC, the NY Dept of State, NYC Dept of City Planning, NYC Dept of Parks and Recreation, and NYC Dept of Transportation, as well as the adjacent property owners.

0 16 32 64September 15, 2009

waterfront stabilization

water gardenrooftop beach

courtyard garden

public walkway (DCP)

Rooftop Beach

AUSTIN NICHOLS WAREHOUSE

1950s TO TODAY

DECAY, ENTROPYFENCES GO UPACCESS RESTRICTED

HISTORICAL CONDITION:THE AUSTIN NICHOLS WAREHOUSE1915-1950s

WORKING WATERFRONT

THE FUTURE

PRESERVE THE HISTORICAL FACADE AND CHARACTERCARVE OUT THE CENTERINJECT ECOLOGYDESIGN A NEW PUBLIC WAYRESTORE WATERFRONT ACTIVITY

Courtyard Garden


shoreline stabilization with shoreline planting

The design reconsiders the building’s waterfront edge as a boardwalk condition

with the East River lapping under the public pathway, and reintroduces native

plants along the reconstructed shoreline.

EAST RIVER

U.S. Bulkheadline

retractable transom and doors

wood plank and terrazo walkway

Existing building

Shoreline plantsin Hesco Basket

AUSTIN NICHOLS WAREHOUSE

Rock Garden

Roof Top Beach

Boardwalk Garden


BATTERY PARK CITY COMMUNITY CENTERNEW YORK, NY

The Battery Park City Community Center landscape project involves green design principles, intensive community process, universal accessibility, and the design of an outdoor terrace that will serve two residential towers and enhance community center programming. Over the last seven years, SCAPE worked with Hanrahan Meyers Architects and the client, the Battery Park City Authority and the Parks Conservancy, to refine programming requirements and develop the public open spaces between sites 23 and 24, the last building sites in BPC North Neighborhood. The project required extensive coordination with the city, the development team of the two residential buildings, and the design team for the plinth between the two buildings. A ‘green lobby’ between the two buildings invites neighborhood residents into the terrace space. The public space, all on top of the community center, is comprised of intimate gathering areas, an arching row of custom benches perfect for watching baseball games on the field below, lush plantings and a signature egg-shaped lawn. The instant popularity of the space and the egg lawn in particular have created a successful community space.

BATTERY PARK CITY COMMUNITY CENTER


103RD STREET COMMUNITY GARDENNEw YORk, NY

SCAPE joined forces with the New York Restoration Project to reimagine the 103rd Street Community Garden in East Harlem. Beginning with a public charette, East Harlem community members submitted their ideas for the new garden, which now includes raised planters for organic gardening, a refurbished basketball court, an open picnic area that doubles as an outdoor theater, a new kid-inspired playground, and two shade structures, featuring pitched roofs and rain barrels to collect rain water for on-site irrigation use. A single sweeping gesture unites the park’s four quadrants. The 103rd Street Community Garden Restoration Project was unveiled in 2011.

PLAY SCAPECOMMUNITY LAWN

ORGANIC GARDEN

BASKETBALL COURT

COMPOSTING TOILET

PLAY EQUIPMENTRAIN BARRELS

SHELTERSHELTER

RAISED PLANTERCLIMBING VINES

ORGANIC GARDEN

103RD STREET GARDEN

PITCHED ROOFcollects rain water

RAIN BARREL

SHADE STRUCTURE FOR

RAINWATER HARVESTING & STORAGE


COMMUNITY LAWN

ORGANIC GARDEN

KID-INSPIRED PLAYGROUND

BASKETBALL COURT

103RD STREET GARDEN

PLAYSCAPE DESIGNED BY KIDS

HANGING OUT AT COMMUNITY GARDEN

BUILT BY VOLUNTEERS

CHEERFUL PLANTING DESIGN

RAINWATER HARVESTING

15

OPTION A - FLEXIBLE STRIPS

A

A

A’

A’

OPTION B - ECOTASTIC

3RD FLOOR ROOF GARDEN

GROUND FLOOR COURTYARD


3’ NYCHA STANDARD FENCE

PLANTING BEDSMALL AND LARGE TREES

PLANTING BEDSMALL TREES

PAVED WALKWAY

CONCEPT PRESENTATION : HARLEM RBI DREAM SCHOOLOCTOBER 7, 2011

OPTION 1: FLEX ROOMS SCAPE / LANDSCAPEARCHITECTURE PLLC p.7


OPTION 3: ECOTASTIC SCAPE / LANDSCAPEARCHITECTURE PLLC p.21


OPTION 3: ECOTASTIC SCAPE / LANDSCAPEARCHITECTURE PLLC p.21

HARLEM RBI DREAM SCHOOLNEW YORK, NY

The Harlem RBI Dream School courtyard and roof garden has been a wonderful opportunity to create a functional and beautiful learning landscape on two levels for this inspiring charter school in East Harlem. Working in hand sketch and study model in a quick back and forth with the client, Harlem RBI Dream School and Jonathan Rose Companies, and the architects, Perkins Eastman and Civic Builders, SCAPE has created a design that meets the needs of the school for learning and gathering spaces, and provides a viewing garden for affordable housing units that overlook the landscape. The design also negotiates the physical relationship between the school and the community with tree plantings along a fence line and pathways that both set off the school as a place of learning and integrate it with the surrounding neighborhood.

3’ NYCHA STANDARD FENCE

PLANTING BEDSMALL AND LARGE TREES

PLANTING BEDSMALL TREES

PAVED WALKWAY


OPTION 1: FLEX ROOMS SCAPE / LANDSCAPEARCHITECTURE PLLC p.7

FOCUSED LEARNING AREAS

BIOSWALE

PLANTING

ZONE

OUTDOOR CLASSROOM

STUDENT GARDENING PLOTS

THIRD FLOOR PLANTING ZONE

THIRD FLOOR COMMUNITY SPACESECOND FLOOR GARDEN

HARLEM RBI DREAM SCHOOL

SCAPE / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PLLC5'6"

52'7"

WOVEN MESH PANELS-Density of mesh openings varies according to desired visual opacity

HARLEM RBI DREAM SCHOOL

5'6"

52'7"

WOVEN MESH PANELS-Density of mesh openings varies according to desired visual opacity


downing street townhousesnew york, ny

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

This project includes streetscape, roof garden and rear yard designs for three connected modern townhouses in the West Village/SoHo district. We were able to incorporate green areas to the project by designing the landscape on structure in both the rear yards and the balconies. The landscape was designed according to sustainable guidelines, and optimizes opportunities to green not only the site, but also its immediate adjacent rear yard lots. The design utilizes a simple, sophisticated palette of bluestone paving, wood fencing, and Cor-ten steel.

SECTION

DOWNINg STREET TOWNHOUSES

SITE PLAN


rHinecliff HouseHudson river valley, neW yorK

On the cliffs of the Hudson River this Victorian farm house is an exercise in landscape renovation and a contemporary remix of the vernacular cottage garden. With dramatic views of the river and over 20-feet of grade change the site is divided into several tiers and spaces each providing their own scale and experience.

RHINECLIff HOUSE

scape

Documents

design expertise

recreationnew york city

design output

creative design

urban design studio

city projects

urban landscape

seoul design olympiad