38. Rhyne Designs' 2nd Anniversary
I’m excited to say that 2014 was a great second year for Rhyne Designs, with a big increase in design work to include a wide variety of residential projects throughout the North and East parts of the greater Bay Area. As the overall economy improves and housing continues to be in high demand, it has been exciting to be able to work with so many homeowners and developers interested in creating high quality outdoor spaces for their projects. With all the fun things that came through Rhyne Designs’ office in 2014 I wanted to highlight a very few that are fresh off the drawing board and heading into construction:
Small Scale Residential
I definitely enjoy the intimacy of designing small scale residential gardens, especially with homeowners who are looking for fine tuned, high quality outdoor spaces. In 2014 these types of projects included two homes in San Anselmo, a four house development for a builder in Walnut Creek, and quite a few home gardens in Berkeley and Oakland. One family in Berkeley recently bought a house with a garden originally designed by Frederick Law Olmstead (an early great American landscape architect). We saw the drawings of the original design from nearly 100 years ago, and that inspired an interesting combination of circles and ellipses in the design that you see at the right.
Large Scale Residential
With larger projects, the design possibilities really open up and I love having the space to create all kinds of different outdoor experiences. These projects also tend to have enough room to provide wildlife habitat and other sustainable features without much fuss. In August I became involved with a project to develop a beautiful 9 acre property just north of Napa. It will include 3 new houses to be set among the grape vines, with each house and its landscape taking on a distinct design.
On all three of these houses, the architecture and landscape are designed together to maximize indoor-outdoor connections and create great spaces for outdoor living. One of them pictured here takes a very modern design approach with large masses of interesting plantings in long bands that define different outdoor spaces, such as the long terrace with outdoor grilling & dining at one end and a fire pit and hot tub at the other.
Another house on this property is a more traditional courtyard style design with the building framing a series of grand outdoor spaces that include a sunken seating area with a fountain, a fire pit terrace, a palm lined lawn, a swimming pool, shaded outdoor dining and a bocce court.
In Oakland I’ve been working on a project consisting of 10 houses that step up a fairly steep slope. Each house is consistent in massing and relationship to the street, but each takes inspiration from different architectural styles. The gardens are designed with different themes as well, such as Arts & Crafts with an emphasis on white flowers, and Mediterranean gardens with a red and orange color theme. This creates a nice variety of plantings to distinguish each yard, but I made sure that the irrigation water use was consistently low.
Landscape Consulting
I’ve continued to consult in other Landscape Architect’s offices, especially in the early part of 2014, where I worked for BASE Landscape Architects on a few school projects. My regular consulting at Jay Thayer Landscape Architects continued throughout the year, producing design drawings for many beautiful gardens in San Francisco, Marin County and the Peninsula. I also continue to help my friends at Geomorph on stream related projects and riparian plantings. It has been great working with and learning from these folks and the variety of projects has been very stimulating.
Off and Running in 2015
With many projects under construction as 2015 begins, I’m very excited to see designs come together in reality! Construction is getting close to finishing on two houses in the Napa Valley, one in St. Helena and another just outside Yountville. You can already get a sense of the outdoor spaces as the houses go up, and I can’t wait to see the gardens completely installed later this summer. Spring seems to have arrived early here in the Bay Area with warm temperatures and lots of flowers coming out already. We’ve had some good amounts of rainfall in a few big storms, but sadly it seems like the drought is not going to be over anytime soon. I do look forward to crafting more gardens in 2015 that can look great without using too much of that all-too-precious resource.
References:
Jay Thayer Landscape Architect http://www.jaythayer.com/
BASE Landscape Architecture http://baselandscape.com/
Geomorph Design http://geomorphdesign.com/