Drawing Board

ValleyCrest Companies has formally announced the launch of its new landscape architecture practice, ValleyCrest Design Group. ValleyCrest Design Group will enhance the company’s service offering which, since its inception in 1949, has consisted of landscape development and maintenance. The new practice is intended to meet the increasing demand for integrated landscape design-build services offered by a single source.

Composed of four specialized landscape design studios, ValleyCrest Design Group marries boutique-style concentrations of expertise with the resources and support of a large and diverse firm.   The studios—Comstock Studio, James Hyatt Studio, HRP Studio, and SiteWorks Studio—each have their own areas of specialization as well as geographic concentrations. ValleyCrest Design Group and its studios will soon be launching an unique brand identity system to reflect the more design-centric focus of the business. 

Paul Comstock, ASLA

Headed by Paul Comstock, ASLA, a former director of landscape for Walt Disney Imagineering, Comstock Studio is the most recent studio to join ValleyCrest Design Group. The studio will concentrate on a variety of landscape architecture projects leveraging Comstock’s expertise as one of the world’s most renowned horticultural experts. With over 20 years of experience re-creating natural habitats as planned themed environments for Disney, Comstock brings deep botanical and horticultural knowledge to ValleyCrest Design Group gained through two decades of traveling the globe and visiting more than 63 countries in pursuit of unique plant varietals for his landscapes.  These plants were used to bring his landscape designs to life at Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida and EuroDisney in Paris, France. 

Poligon Park Architecture has announced the winner of this year’s installment of their “Reflecting Place” design competition, which is open exclusively to members of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).  Kerry White, ASLA, and Emily Patterson, Associate ASLA, of Design Concepts, a community and landscape architect firm in Lafeyette, Colorado, were selected for their design “Undulations: Reflections of Water.”

The annual “Reflecting Place” competition commemorates the location of each year’s ASLA EXPO, and in honor of Minnesota’s notoriety as the Land of 10,000 lakes, this year’s competition carried an aquatic theme.  ASLA member entrants were encouraged to design a shelter that reflected characteristics of waterfront architecture, naturally occurring waterside phenomena, or water itself.

White and Patterson’s winning entry explores the form, movement, and path of water, along with various distinctions including its reflectivity and ability to be transformed by other elements.  The shelter itself echoes these concepts and emulates the cyclical nature of water by utilizing sloping roof panels directed toward a central gutter visibly taking rainwater to another stage of its journey.

JJR is designing the expansion of the University Ridge Golf Course project in collaboration with golf course architect Robert Trent Jones, Jr. (RTJ) and Bryant Taylor Gordon Golf (BTG).

The team is currently providing site design for the expansion and reconfiguration of the golf course to include a new nine-hole academy course, a new practice area for UW-Madison golf, a new driving range and a championship caliber running course for the UW-Madison cross country team. Completion date is scheduled for the fall of 2007. The team originally worked on the design of University Ridge providing the environmental and master planning services for the 660-acre golf course and recreational facility.