Christine Ten Eyck FASLA
President, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects
Phoenix, Arizona - and Austin, Texas |
|
| |
|
The Memory of Water
Landscape Architects in arid parts of the world grapple daily with attempting to create sheltered, memorable places that connect the urban dweller with nature.
Desert dwellers need the connection to our sacred life force element of water to exist in such inhospitable climates.
How can this precious element of water be judiciously integrated into landscape architecture to create purpose along with beauty and psychological cooling?
An evolution of case studies in Arizona and Texas will be discussed that attempt to bring the poetry of water into arid dwellers lives while transforming and fortifying urban social interaction, wildlife habitat, biomass and microclimatic cooling.
Is the memory of water enough?
Christine E. Ten Eyck founded Ten Eyck Landscape Architects inc. in 1997 with the mission to connect the urban dweller with nature. Our inspiration comes from our clients and their sites’ region, culture, history, and future.
The outdoor spaces we create are multi-sensory gardens that have purpose along with beauty: air and water purification, urban wildlife habitat creation, climate mitigation, places for social interaction and human healing.
Because of living in the arid southwest, our projects evolve around the path of sacred water – whether it is rain, air conditioning condensate or gray water.
We believe that buildings are our new aquifer and use the water produced to create urban habitat for people and wildlife.
Ten Eyck is recognized as a leader in the field of sustainable design for the southwest and have won national American Society of Landscape Architects Honor awards in 2009 and 2010.
Article from ASLA's Landscape Architecture Magazine, Feb 2011
A SIMPLE MANTRA – “connecting the urban dweller with nature”.
Christine Ten Eyck has become a master landscape architect nationally recognized for incorporating natural beauty and emotion into projects.
The mantra is evident in her extensive body of public and residential work in the Phoenix area, where she is president of Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Inc.
Ten Eyck, who graduated in 1981 bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture, believes that the built environment – our streets, offices, homes, parks, jogging paths etc. affect our behavior – good or bad depending on how well they are designed and how integrated with nature they are.
She and her firm are on a crusade in Phoenix: to rid the city of as much asphalt and concrete as possible and replace this plethora of man made hardscape with Sonoran Desert native plants.
After graduation in 1981, she worked first for James Lambert and Associates and then Naud Burnett and Partners, both in Dallas. Ten Eyck said that a weeklong rafting trip through the Grand Canyon was practically a spiritual experience that inspired her to move to Phoenix in 1986, where she was hired by one of the then eight landscape architecture firms in the city.
The change in design style from Texas to water-conscious Arizona was dramatic. “I didn’t know what xeriscape was until I moved to Phoenix,” Ten Eyck said. “But, I chose to work with advocates of native plants.”
She eventually opened a landscape architecture firm with a partner in 1995. Two years later Ten Eyck opened her current firm, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, which employs 11 people.
Today, the firm is know for high-end residential designs and master planning and design of large-scale urban projects. Ten Eyck’s high-end residential, commercial and community projects have been highlighted in dozens of magazines and journals, such as Landscape Architecture, Phoenix Home and Garden, Vogue, Sunset Magazine, Landscape Journal and House and Garden.
Her concepts also have been touted in several books, including The Desert Home and The New American Pool.
She also guest lectures at Texas Tech University, Arizona State University and University of Arizona.
She shares her technical experience, encourages the students not to over-design and advises them to remember one important philosophy: do not be afraid to express your ideas. “I’ve had a zillion ideas rejected, but I’ve also had hundreds accepted.
Keep trying and be passionate about what you do,” Ten Eyck said.
web sites
Article from ASLA's Landscape Architecture Magazine, Feb 2011
2010 ASLA AWARD
Ten Eyck Landscape Architecture
University of Arizona College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
images of the 2010 ASLA AWARD winning project
Underwood Family Sonoran Landscape Laboratory Tucson, AZ USA
|
