KINGSTON LANDSCAPE

Location: Kingston, New York
Type: Landscape and Site Planning
Status: Under Construction
Size: N/A
Client: Undisclosed
Team: Daniel Markiewicz, Miroslava Brooks, Kyle Troyer

The project is for a young couple who approached us to develop a landscape strategy that creates privacy from an adjacent neighbor - located at the top of a hill - and provides various exterior spaces for lounging, entertainment and relaxation. It was an opportunity to investigate some of the ideas of looseness and whimsy we’ve been continuously exploring in our work, here developed at a scale of a domestic landscape.

The relatively steep topography required a sectional strategy which would work with existing retaining walls. We developed a series of cascading decks that act as oversized steps and provide areas of rest and pause around the existing pond. Instead of a rigid formal gesture, we saw an opportunity to create a more playful composition of various zones of activity that may more spontaneously happen along the scattered deck ensemble. A specific planting strategy was also developed to delineate different zones of the property - a grove of taller trees on the west edge to shield the area visually from neighbors, vertical garden along the curved retaining walls and a larger oval-shaped zone with low-shrubbery.