Legacy Architecture: The Locus of Community, Art, Economics, Environment

by Tracy Ostroff
Contributing Editor

Summary: The landscape architecture firm Design Workshop orchestrates their projects within a four-ringed comprehensive and collaborative approach that balances the elements of art, community, economics, and environment. The projects that are most successful, Chair Kurt Culbertson says, are the ones that fall in the center of the Legacy rings, where the elements are in balance. The theory is the outgrowth of an academic notion of practice that led the designers to form their partnership 35 years ago.

Culbertson and his colleagues put forth their mission statement like this:

“We believe that when environment, art, community, and economics are combined in harmony with the dictates of the land and needs of society, magical places result, places that lift the spirit, sustainable places of beauty, significance, and quality. We are dedicated to designing extraordinary landscapes that leave a legacy for future generations, creating such places for our clients, for society, and for the well-being of our planet.”

The award-winning firm, which specializes in landscape architecture, land planning, urban design, and tourism planning, translates these compelling concepts that encourage the designers to “go deep,” Culbertson says, to transform spaces into places of value. Each project begins with a dilemma and a thesis. The architects then derive Legacy goals for each of the four elements and attach metrics, which they customize for each program.

Design synthesis
The architects note that the firm combines principles of smart growth, sustainable design, and environmentally sound planning to reconcile economic needs with the preservation of scenic, cultural, and community values.

In getting to Legacy Design, Culbertson says, the firm realized that the projects that had been most successful were those that balanced the four disciplines in the Legacy Rings. “Legacy Design is a way to focus our energies and effort to craft projects that incorporate the traditional aspects of the Brundtland Commission’s definition of sustainable design, economics, environment, and community and add the restorative and timeless fourth dimension of art. And we are attempting to apply this synthesis in a transparent and holistic fashion to everything we touch.”

The approach leads to “quadruple bottom-line accounting,” Culbertson says, that requires design inquiry, strategizing, and scoring for each of the four dimensions. They are primarily issues of environment, Culbertson notes, although there are some questions of community, particularly those that drive social interaction, and a fiscal analysis. Art, of course, is harder to measure, and trying to has sparked debate in the design workshop office and among clients. To measure the success of the project, the firm sets aside funding of their own for analysis and commissioning and then asks clients to match it.

This is a process that appeals to many businesses that wish to align the operation of the business with its philosophy. Referring to management consultant Tom Peters, Culbertson says: “What gets measured, gets done.”

Still, the firm sometimes finds itself pushing for a level of inquiry that goes beyond the comfort level of its clients. Nonetheless, Culbertson says: “Great clients are asking many of these same questions themselves.” He notes that many clients are looking for a legacy for themselves and their businesses. He candidly notes that they have had some stops and starts and that through the case-study process they continually assess and re-evaluate their work.

Blurring practice and academics
The ideas of Legacy Design and the collaborative and transparent approach it would take to get there was first planted when the partners formed a venture in 1969 at North Carolina State University to give the university’s landscape architecture students real-world experience. Design Workshop Inc. was purposefully named for the process of collaboration that the firm sought to foster, rather than for the names of founders. The firm has grown to eight offices, where the principals eschew the “starchitect” model in favor of a philosophy that values every team member. “We are all stars,” Culbertson says.

With its academic roots, the firm still places a premium on learning and has an extensive continuing education program and an internal university it calls Design U., with its own “provost.” The firm also engages in Legacy Design days built around specific topics. Design Workshop also expects its designers to pursue graduate school or an equivalent, maintains a faculty-in-residence program to bring academia to the office and conversely expects staff members to give back to academia, and offers regular internship programs along with other programs for the community. The firm will soon also issue grants for applied research activities.

“The decision to formalize the Legacy Design theory was a decision by Design Workshop to work toward becoming a sustainable organization that also champions the human need for beauty,” the architects note in Toward Legacy, a book of essays, project descriptions, and case studies. “A society that meets the needs of the environment and people is healthy. One that meets the demands of the environment and economy is efficient. To bridge the economy and society is to seek justice. But we must strive to create a civilization that also uses artful design to hearten the spirit. At the intersection of four of these values, in the dialogue among them, design can begin to build and sustain more than built work. It can bring meaning to existence.”