Dept. is a landscape architecture and urban design studio that provides creative, useful, and adaptive design responses for the public and the environment.

Dept.

The Court is a renovation of the Seaside Motor Court, designed by Scott Merrill and built in 1989. The project reintroduces a native coastal scrub forest into two interior courtyards and creates a new café and streetscape along Scenic Highway 30-A. 

The design of the Court's landscape emerged from a desire to create privacy between a shared central lawn and the hotel's private cabin units. Instead of a fence, subtle sand dunes with planting create natural screening and lush views for guests. The planting palette showcases North Florida’s unique coastal scrub landscape: sand live oaks, sabal palms, palmettos, and a mix of scrub flowers and mints create a variegated landscape. The curb stones are made of custom tabby concrete block that draws on a traditional, regional method of forming concrete with dense shell aggregate.

The smaller northern courtyard functions both as a stormwater catchment area for the entire site and a tupelo grove. Finally, along the scenic highway, new decking, planters, and a seating area engage the sidewalk to create a more urban and dynamic streetscape setting.

Client: Seaside Community Development Corporation
Collaborators: Florida Haus, Artisan of Seagrove Beach, Thos. Stein Inc., Potter Landscaping
Size: 30,000 SF

Seaside, FL

The Court

Dept. is working with Buffalo Bayou Partnership on the Gravel Silos and Stormwater Park, a nearly 5-acre site   located on the East End of Buffalo Bayou in Houston’s Second Ward neighborhood. 

Formerly the site of a concrete and gravel operation, the Gravel Silos Park will celebrate the remaining relics of the area’s industrial past – four large concrete silos, ‘rocks’ made of disposed concrete slurry, and buried concrete walls – and create a generous open space at the water’s edge. The Stormwater Park takes advantage of the site's naturally low elevation to provide a neighborhood stormwater retention space and  wetland. The wetland  also recirculates water from Buffalo Bayou through a large pipe that forms a symbolic gateway to the east side of Buffalo Bayou's linear hike and bike trail system.

This project addresses infrastructure concerns around flooding and erosion by elevating the main trail out of the 100-year floodplain and by  subsequently creating generous open spaces and viewing platforms at the bayou's edge. It is part of the larger Buffalo Bayou East master plan and   is an an ongoing collaboration with SWA Group. 

Houston, TX

Gravel Silos and Stormwater Park

The North Miami “Repetitive Loss” Vision Plan is a city-wide plan that addresses the future use of North Miami’s flood-prone residential properties, or “repetitive loss properties (RLP).” The plan outlines a vision for RLP sites as a network of small stormwater retention parks that work in tandem to reduce flooding for North Miami residents.

If a homeowner files a flood insurance claim of more than $1000 twice or more in a 10-year period, their property is deemed a "repetitive loss" (RLP) by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Given the increased frequency of flooding and the impacts of sea level rise in North Miami, this phenomenon has become more prevalent. In response, through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance program, the City of North Miami acquired an RLP site and in 2019 commissioned a concept design, pilot project, and vision plan to address the use of future RLP acquisitions.

The plan outlines a vision for RLP sites as a network of small stormwater retention parks that provide multiple benefits. Importantly, this approach can reduce flooding, mitigate the impact of vacant or abandoned lots, introduce open space uses that contribute to broader community well-being, protect residents that cannot afford relocate, and restore habitats and recharge groundwater. The parks can also score within multiple activity areas of FEMA’s Community Rating System and therefore lower the cost of flood insurance city-wide. 

Rather than lay vacant, RLP sites can be leveraged as a form of stormwater infrastructure that is visible, accessible, and public-facing. Through dimensional standards, lot typologies, standard planting palettes, maintenance guidelines, zoning recommendations, and illustrated plans, this vision plan provides a roadmap for the city to develop future RLP sites into stormwater parks. Beyond the city, the document also serves as a model for other cities and communities confronting a similar phenomenon of repetitive loss properties. 

 Van Alen Institute, Urban Impact Lab, Forerunner, Inc.

North Miami, FL

Repetitive Loss Vision Plan

to develop a neighborhood framework plan in Houston's Second Ward. The plan will foreground walkable urbanism, including design visioning around the streetscape and public realm.

Concept Neighborhood Framework Plan

A collaboration with Rice Grounds Facilities Engineering and Planning, “Prairie Plots” is a living installation that explores the social, environmental, and cultural dimensions of alternative landscape maintenance practices.

The 10,000 square-foot installation replaces an area of mowed lawn on the Rice Campus with a prairie garden. The prairie is given form through a process of selective mowing, thereby reducing mowing costs and impacts on campus and providing a new public garden.

Prairie Plots

The Good Neighbor Stormwater Park is a community park that functions as a stormwater retention basin to reduce flooding for the neighborhood. The park design was the winning design of Van Alen’s “Keeping Current” competition to reimagine the use of North Miami’s “repetitive loss properties,” or flood-prone residential lots.

With input from community members and residents, the Good Neighbor Stormwater Park was developed as a localized floodplain management approach that integrates green infrastructure and community-oriented open space. The central basin exposes the shallow water table while providing additional storage space for stormwater. The new walking path winds around the central basin and moves through a demonstration garden of several South Florida habitats, including pine flatwoods, hardwood hammock, marsh, and cypress slough. In addition, an oversized blue pipe serves both as a play structure and seating and conveys flood water to the central basin.

Finally, Dept. collaborated with Miami-based artist Adler Guerrier to create public artwork and signage that draws attention to the fluctuating water levels in the central basin as well as calls out relevant flood hazard information. The park therefore benefits the city’s Community Rating System and proposes a model for alternative land use of flood-prone vacant land in at-risk communities.

The project was completed in 2020 with contributions from The Rockefeller Foundation, Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Miami Foundation, Target, and Terra Group; as well as The Nature Conservancy and Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

 Van Alen Institute, Urban Impact Lab, Adler Guerrier, Andrew Aquârt, Forerunner, Inc.


Good Neighbor Stormwater Park

Dept. is working with Windsor, FL to develop the landscape plan for the new North Village, which is situated along the Indian River Lagoon on a barrier island in South Central Florida. The project connects the new development site to the lagoon, extending the estuary to support habitat for wildlife, increase biodiversity, and provide an adaptive landscape for the barrier island. 

Formerly a  citrus grove, the 54-acre North Village site  is an opportunity to   create an estuarine landscape that  supports the unique ecosystem of the Indian River Lagoon. One of the most biodiverse estuaries in North America, the Indian River Lagoon has suffered from the impacts of development: loss of biodiversity,  pollution, poor water quality, and wetland decline.  Modeling development as a form of stewardship, the North Village  is  dedicated to ecological landscape practices: from the design of littoral edges that support wetland plants and habitat to the establishment of maintenance procedures that reduce irrigation and artificial fertilizers. 

The stormwater  management strategy includes two wetlands; a freshwater wetland that filters run-off and improves water quality through aquatic planting, and a brackish wetland that is connected to the Indian River Lagoon, which  extends the estuarine habitat and supports natural tidal  flushing. Connecting the two wetlands is the "Slough," a coral stone crossing that celebrates the relationship between the two wetland areas.  The overall hydrological approach to the  North Village also anticipates sea-level rise and storm surge impacts by creating a diversity of  salt-tolerant plant communities.

Indian River Lagoon, FL

North Village

Pine in the Sand is a living installation and public artwork at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Cambridge, MA. A monument to impermanence, the installation invites visitors to reflect on environmental change and the labor of maintenance and upkeep.

The installation is comprised of a mound of sand planted with a pitch pine, 

 and partially contained by a ring of concrete barriers. Opposite the mound, rows of granite benches form pew-like seating. Visitors are invited to interact with the installation by playing around the pile and raking the sand with provided tools. Through the seasons, the sand shifts, the tree drops its needles and grows, and small animals burrow and move in. The installation acts as a register for environmental change and draws attention to the labor of maintenance and the interdependence of human and natural systems.

Pine in the Sand was the winning entry for the fourth cycle of the Radcliffe Institute Public Art Competition.

 Cambridge Landscape Company, Pine & Swallow Environmental Services, New England Specialty Soils


Cambridge, MA

Pine in the Sand

Solomon Square is a roughly quarter-acre public plaza located on Central Square in Downtown Seaside. Dept. developed three modular planted seating areas that were used to activate the open space as part of a renovation by the plaza’s adjacent retailers.

An important goal of the project was to create a welcoming area in front of the storefronts that incorporated a tropical plant palette. The project site, located in the cooler climate of Northern Florida, however, required a sensitive approach to identifying cold-hardy tropical species that could withstand the region’s occasional freezes. Dept. worked with regional providers to hand-select plant material, including specimen trees.

The benches that form the planter edges are made of three precast concrete units (one corner unit and two straight units) with a salt-rock finish. The modular units are used to create three distinct planter sizes – small, medium, and large – arranged at angles. The palms and understory are planted as bouquets within the concrete benches, which also provide partial shade for the seating area. Embedded post lights create a warmly lit atmosphere at night. Models by Lily Li.

Client: Seaside Community Development Corporation

Collaborators: Artisan of Seagrove Beach, Inc., Premier Precast

Solomon Square Planters

A small garden that balances privacy and collectivity in a shared outdoor space for two accessory dwelling units. 

Dept. is working with HR Design Dept. to design the landscape for the renovation of two bungalows and two new accessory dwelling units that are part of the Menil Collection's campus in Montrose. The garden's primary feature is a partial "fence" comprised of ground-runner and curved palms that creates a playful boundary between the two lots.

Menil ADUs

Remnant Nursery is an digital exhibition for the Architectural League of New York's 2022 League Prize: Grounding. The full exhibition can be found 

As landscape architects and urban designers, we work with the ground in a literal sense, moving and making dirt. From the garden to the city, landscape mediates social and ecological relationships by fundamentally transforming the ground. While our work is sensitive to the conservation of fragile ecosystems, we also invite the challenge of working within disturbed sites and hybrid environments that foreground the messiness of urban ecologies.

In the Houston metropolitan area, rare vestiges of the region’s once-vast Gulf Coast prairie remain. Cared for by local stewards, these remnant landscapes host a diversity of endemic species uniquely adapted to Houston’s hyperlocal climate and soil conditions. However, many of these prairies have been destroyed to create strip malls, gas stations, supermarkets, and residential subdivisions. While protecting endemic landscapes is important, in the context of rapid urban expansion, alternatives to conservation and preservation are also necessary.

 is a temporary nursery established to rescue plants from threatened Gulf Coast prairies and distribute them to Houston’s residents. The nursery invites community members to facilitate a process of plant migration. In the landscape industry, typical nurseries sell a limited palette of commercially viable individual plant species. In contrast, Remnant Nursery provides sample swatches of excavated plant communities, each containing a multitude of endemic plant species growing together.

In distributing these plant communities, the nursery aims to extend the life of the prairie within Houston’s urban landscape. When planted in backyard gardens, roadway medians, or other urban sites, these rescued plants build up soil health; increase groundwater infiltration; reduce maintenance and emissions affiliated with lawn equipment; and bolster biodiversity and habitats for urban ecosystems.

While rooted in the specific ecology of Houston, 

 proposes a model of collectivity and exchange within the broader context of climate adaptation and urban transformation.

Supported by Rice School of Architecture; with thanks to Jane Reierson.

Arch League Prize 2022

Remnant Nursery

The research argues that coastal resilience on barrier islands is produced through the protection of private property. It examines the impacts of rebuilding, reconstruction, infrastructure investment on the physical deterioration of the barrier island. The project proposes an alternative to status quo development that works with, not against, a dynamic landscape.

On barrier islands of the eastern seaboard, vacation homes occupy a majority of the land use, with properties held as financial assets rather than primary residences. With each successive storm as well as with the slow onset of sea level rise and accelerated sediment erosion, taxpayer dollars are disproportionally allocated towards the re-stabilization and reconstruction of damaged homes and infrastructure. The resilience of barrier islands points not to an ecological capacity to withstand system shocks, but rather to the persistence and preservation of capital in the form of private property in predictably volatile environments.

The primary case study takes place on Hatteras Island, NC; commonly known as the Outer Banks. The case study tests the viability of a Sand Trust, a nonprofit land trust, that promotes the phasing out of development by incentivizing coastal retreat. One of the tools proposed by the Sand Trust is a digital platform that integrates real estate investment data, historic erosion rates, and projected sea level rise to paint a more accurate portrait of climate risk and encourage land donations.

The project also visualizes the spatial and environmental impact retreat: the process of unbuilding, the transformation of land use from private houses to public open space, and the resulting dynamic landscape. By rethinking prevailing development logics, this project demonstrates how a barrier island can ultimately resume its ecological function as a coastal defense line.

This design research was awarded the Harvard Graduate School of Design Master in Design Studies Thesis Prize in 2019.

Hatteras Island, NC

Lines in the Sand

CO-SI or "Community Oriented Stormwater Infrastructure," is an  interdisciplinary collaborative research project with Rice University's School of Architecture, SSPEED Center, and Department of Sociology that seeks to understand the ways in which stormwater infrastructure has previously contributed to social inequity in Houston. The project, which is funded by the Rice University's Sustainable Futures Grant will develop alternative approaches to flood risk reduction through hydrological modeling, social geography, urban design, and landscape planning. 

Unique rainfall, ground, and soil conditions in the Houston region require specialized stormwater management. Large-scale engineering solutions are disadvantageous for several reasons: first, they are costly and time intensive; second, they tend to be disconnected from the fabric of the city; third, and importantly, because engineered solutions focus solely on flood reduction, they exclude other important factors, including community benefits, environmental or ecological resilience, and equity. In contrast to single-purpose, large-scale engineering solutions, Community-Oriented Stormwater Infrastructure is localized and seeks multiple benefits. For example, stormwater retention spaces can function simultaneously as resilience hubs, public spaces, or restoration areas, thereby contributing to community wellbeing.

Through mapping, analysis, and design scenario development, the team will identify and model equitable, neighborhood-based flood hazard mitigation and adaptation approaches for flood-prone communities in Houston. The project is supported by Rice University’s Sustainable Futures Fund and includes collaborators Prof. Philip Bedient, the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering, Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Director of the SSPEED Center, and Prof. Elizabeth Roberto, Assistant Professor of Sociology.

CO-SI Research Initiative

This study examines the local watersheds of the Knitting Mill and East Haven Creeks in Norfolk, VA. The area of study, like many flood-prone urban areas, is located within historic wetlands of the Lafayette River, Knitting Mill, and East Haven Creeks. This neighborhood-scale study analyzes opportu-nities within the urban fabric to mitigate frequent flooding. Three blue/green infrastructure strategies rethinking storm-water storage, conveyance, and infiltration as a public infra-structure. These interventions are strategically placed to take advantage of their elevation and the infrastructural capacity, but also focus on contributing to the public realm and to the future development of the neighborhood.

Norfolk, VA

Knitting Mill/East Haven Creek Study

The Johnston Square Open Space Plan was an urban design and landscape planning study conducted in 2019 with ReBuild Metro to evaluate the open spaces around Baltimore's Johnston Square neighborhood. The study analyzed existing open spaces, made recommendations for planning additional open spaces and creating an interconnected greenway system, and finally, proposed pilot projects for implementation at the block scale. 

Baltimore, MD

Johnston Square Open Space Plan

 on a planning study for the Main Street corridor of Downtown Bertram, TX. 

Vaughan Street, colloquially known to Bertram residents as Main Street, is a vital corridor that forms the backbone of Downtown Bertram. This planning study outlines recommendations, based on field research and dialogue with Bertram’s stakeholders, for revitalizing that corridor. Ultimately, the goal is to re-envision Main Street as a vibrant, economically viable public realm that supports walkability and pedestrian commerce.


The City of Bertram lies at the gateway to the Hill Country. Situated along Highway 29, it’s connected to Austin to the south, the nearby City of Burnet to the west, and Waco to the north. The downtown area is defined by a section of Vaughan Street–commonly referred to as Main Street–one block south of Highway 29 between West Street and Vaughan’s convergence with Highway 29. Downtown Bertram is also adjacent to the railroad, which hosts a passenger steam train nearly every weekend of the year. 

There are a number of potential opportunities to improve Downtown Bertram, including increasing visibility and connectivity to Main Street, improving the streetscape and public realm along the main commercial corridor, and activating underutilized sites. Building off of Main Street’s existing assets and strengthening its connectivity and walkability, this planning study addresses the city's broader goal of developing a holistic vision for the Downtown area.  

Bertram, TX

Bertram Main Street

Buy-Out End Use is a planning study in collaboration with Buy-In Community Planning, Inc. and funded by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. The project examines New York State’s vast dataset of buy-out properties and assembles a systematic approach to identifying land-based design strategies for the end-use of buy-out properties. 

As communities decide to buy-out flood-prone properties, and as homeowners volunteer to be bought out, the land that is left behind poses a unique opportunity for open, public space, stormwater or flood resilience, and community programming. This planning study aims to develop landscape-based approach to transforming buy-out properties into localized stormwater infrastructure or coastal protection. The scenarios developed through the study draw from an analysis of flooding types and typical land uses and urban contexts. Buy-out end use strategies for storm surge differ from end-use strategies for inland or riparian conditions. Ultimately, the study aims to transform flood-prone properties into a form of localized stormwater infrastructure. 

Long Island, NY

Buy-Out End Use

Garden Ecologies: Environmental Transformation and Care was a two-day symposium hosted by Rice School of Architecture and the John Fairey Garden Conservation Foundation on urban ecology, landscape practice and management, and climate adaptation.

The symposium provided a critical perspective on gardens, not simply as private retreats, but also as trans-scalar spaces that can engage issues of urban expansion, environmental transformation, and climate change. Garden Ecologies  expanded on traditional notions of the garden and gardening through three areas of focus: garden history, landscape design practice, and land management. Through these topics, the symposium reflected on the garden as a test bed for novel ecological entanglements and as a medium for exploring contemporary topics such as settler colonial histories, labor, domesticity, industrialization, ecological conservation and restoration, and models for intervention, stewardship, and practice.

Taking place in the epicenter of the Gulf Coast region—where extraction and ecology collide—this symposium invited discussion from both academia and practice on the garden as a potential space of environmental transformation and care.

Moderator: Brittany Utting
Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Rice University; Cofounder, HOME-OFFICE

,
Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Virginia

,
Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Trinity University

,
K. Laurence Stapleton Professor of Literatures in English, Bryn Mawr College

Moderator: Mariel Collard
Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute; Founding Principal, Collard Tranquilino


Principal of FORGE Landscape Architecture; Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin

Susana Rojas Saviñón and Hortense Blanchard

,
Director, Test Plot; Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

Moderator:
Isaac Stein
Design Principal, Dept.


Elizabeth Weaver Director of Horticulture, Cornell Botanic Gardens; Lecturer, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University

, Ph.D.
Conservation Manager, Buffalo Bayou Partnership

Garden Ecologies: Environmental Transformation and Care is organized by Maggie Tsang, assistant professor at Rice University, with Randy Twaddle, executive director at the John Fairey Garden Conservation Foundation in Hempstead, Texas, in partnership with Rice Architecture, Rice Center for Environmental Studies, and Rice Office for Research.

Garden Ecologies Symposium

North Shore Open Space Park is a 28-acre waterfront park at the City’s northern boundary. Isaac Stein was the lead designer for this project and coordinated the extensive design review and approvals process with the City of Miami Beach. The waterfront park anchors the new open space within an improved urban framework, curates and preserves the area’s natural coastal condition and ecology, provides a series of walkways, and enhances and solidates programming and uses.

The park is comprised of groves of maritime hammock trees as well as seagrapes and palm trees running the length of the park which create a lush waterfront dunescape.

Miami Beach, FL

North Beach Oceanside Park

The Collins Canal Park is a 3.5-acre linear park along the north side of the Miami Beach Convention Center that preserves majestic mahogany trees and a iconic strangler fig while providing new shaded areas for public art. Importantly, the linear park restores mangroves at the canal's edge. Isaac Stein was the lead designer for this project while working at West 8. 

Situated among residential neighborhoods, the New World Symphony campus, Miami Beach Botanical Garden, and Miami Beach’s signature Lincoln Road, the Collins Canal Park is part of the 40-acre Convention Center district that all together adds twelve acres of public space.

Located on the north side of the Convention Center, the park serves as a background for the historic Carl Fisher Clubhouse, the City’s oldest building, and establishes new paths and a sculpture garden along the Collins Canal. The park also features ample shade trees, a butterfly garden, a ballroom terrace, and a plant palette that showcases South Florida’s notable primordial plant life. The southern bank of the Collins Canal was reseeded with mangroves to restore the littoral shelf of the canal; and most notably, a majestic Strangler Fig is preserved and celebrated as a focal point along Washington Avenue.