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This landscape design alternative, labeled #4, is my personal favorite of all the concepts that I created for NCAR.
 Landscape Design Alternative #4 for NCAR in Boulder, CO In this design alternative, the area in the upper right is sunken, with steps leading to flagstone paving at the bottom. You can see water cascading down the center of the steps to the bottom. This area becomes the focal point relative to the three other areas which are raised up high. These three areas form a kind of ampitheatre seating which looks down into the sunken area. Those three higher areas feature sitting steps. So this could be a venue for an award ceremony or marriage or other focal activity.
I often show this series of four alternative designs to potential clients, so they can see how wide the range of potential design can be. If we can find so many diverse concepts in a space with such tight design parameters, the possibilities really are endless.
After I presented these four concepts to NCAR, their committee requested something simpler, so I gave them a fifth landscape design alternative which, with modifications, is represented in the photograph of what was finally built.
Here is landscape design alternative #3 I presented to NCAR in Boulder, CO:
 Landscape Design Alternative #2 for NCAR in Boulder, CO The architectural style of this landscape design alternative is most akin to that of the building itself. The architect who was involved making minor modification to the building structure, Steve Loos, asked me to develop an alternative that reflected the architectural design gesture of NCAR as I.M. Pei had designed it in the early 60’s. This was really his launching pad to international prominence, therefore it was a very important building to him. He had taken his inspiration from the geometric forms of Anasazi cliff dwellings found in Mesa Verde. So with this alternative, I’m now trying to take these geometric patterns and apply them to the horizontal landscape, much as he had applied them to the vertical landscape.
This is landscape design alternative 2 I submitted to NCAR for their rooftop plaza.
 2nd Alternative Landscape Design for NCAR in Boulder, CO This alternative is the most radically different of them all. Its design is aligned with NCAR’s mission of doing research into atmospheric streaming patterns. This mission is reflected in a blue tile wave-like pattern representing water, which is similar in its dynamics to currents in the atmosphere. I gave a presentation at NCAR about water as the element of life, and the fluid dynamics of our design work with its close relationship to archetypal movement patterns in nature. Offices in NCAR’s towers look down on this rooftop plaza, so their employees could look down and see this fluid wavelike pattern–a representation of their mission. However, they chose a different, simpler design alternative.
As previously posted, I created the landscape design for the NCAR rooftop plaza in Boulder, Colorado. This project is really quite interesting, because I actually gave them a total of five radically different design alternatives to choose from. Because of the unusually tight design constraints, this really shows the tremendous diversity that can be possible to design even in such a constrained setting.
In this situation, I was working with a rooftop which already had giant, deep planting beds with mature trees geometrically spaced within them. I liked the grid-like regular pattern of the trees. That was the original concept which I felt was worth keeping intact. So we have this extraordinarily geometrical patterning of the trees, but then we have four radically different approaches to the hardscape, the planting beds, definition of places to sit, changes of elevation of the paving and grass areas. This series shows there are many, many ways to find strong design alternatives and solutions, yet given the same exceedingly restrictive parameters that limit what is possible.
As I post all four of the landscape design alternatives which NCAR turned down, along with the fifth (landscape design photo here) which was built, you will see a wide range of possible concepts.
 Landscape Design for NCAR in Boulder, CO: Alternative 1 Here is “Alternative 1″. The circles are the trees, and the squares inside the circles are the planter boxes. This design is closest to the original layout. I varied the sizes and directions of pavement to create interest, which would have replaced the original 8×8 grid of concrete squares the size of the tree planters.
I’m going to take a little diversion from my usual mode, which is blogging about completed projects. Another topic which I find interesting is beautiful designs that, for one reason or another, are not completed. I think every designer who has been working for some time ends up with a collection of these, and some are memorable stories in their own right, even though they did not get past the design stage. Sometimes creative energy can go beyond budgetary constraints, committee imagination or, in this case, political consistency.
Some years ago, Boulder’s sister city of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, gave Boulder, Colorado, the spectacular gift of a beautiful tea house. Built from 1987-1990, this tea house was given a place of honor in the city of Boulder, near downtown next to Boulder Creek and across from a park.
As a reciprocal gift, the city of Boulder decided to give Dushanbe a cybercafe. In honor of the truly incredible gift from Dushanbe, this cybercafe was to be a gift of some magnificence. One of our top architects, Dave Barrett of Barrett Studio Architects, was chosen to design the building and I was honored to be the landscape architect for the landscape design. So, take a look at what we had cooked up….
 Original plan for cybercafe gift to Boulder's sister city, Dushanbe, Tajikistan This original cybercafe project was to be right on the main drag of capital, sandwiched between the National Library and the Duchanbe Philharmonic building. We designed a mini-plaza in front of an extraordinary piece of architecture based on a solar energy kiva. The whole plaza is based on the theme of water, with three really significant water elements. In fact, passers-by can interact with one of water features by crossing a bridge over the water feature that spirals down into the depths beneath the bridge. There are some high-tech fountains where wave-like patterns are created by multiple jets of water.
However, the whole thing never got built there. We had developed this extraordinary concept for the heart of town. Later, after we finished working through all of this, due I believe to political pressure, the whole thing was moved to the edge of town, to a much less prominent position. So, we had to downscale the whole project so it would be harmonious with its surroundings.
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