Landscape/Architecture Firms Growing Closer | News | Architectural Record Annotated

By > Dianna Dilworth >

Renzo Piano’s design called for a green roof that would essentially lift a piece of the park and place it atop the building: seven earth mounds that would serve as a research facility.

As architects attempt ever more ambitious feats with green projects, the collaborative relationship between members of a design team is becoming more important.

“It is not about just dressing something that the architect gives us,” Loomis says. “We would always like to be in there right at the same time the architect starts on the project, if possible.”

As we got up specifically on the roof, it is really a piece of (Piano’s) building, so we had a lot of meetings about how to make that roof work with his office,” says Lawrence Reed, a principal of SWA.

Images courtesy SWA Group (top); BAR Architects (middle); Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (above)

As the environmental details of sites become more integrated into architectural design, be it to store water or to absorb the impact of a large building, landscape design is becoming a major part of the architecture.