Bronx, NY
currently in construction

Tres Puentes is a new 118 unit building serving low-income seniors, located at 285 East 138th Street, Bronx NY.  The project includes the West building, with 56 units and East building that includes a new Community Senior Center. The new building and landscapes fulfill the guidelines of Enterprise Green Communities and NYC Active Design, with a sustainable design that promotes active living. The landscape scope includes 16,000 sf of open space including a community terrace on the first floor roof, a meditative garden, and an activity court for the senior center. The design also includes the integration of the existing 25,000 sf entry and rear garden into the overall site design.

Together, the landscape spaces create a campus that bring residents together to observe and interact with each other and the living environment. Our design provides opportunities to participate in the landscape and includes elements such as interactive musical instruments, fitness class spaces with soft safety surfaces, stationary bicycles, and a walking loop to encourage physical activity through out the building and its open spaces. A palette of natural materials, wood decking, stone walls and stabilized aggregate pavement creates a soothing setting. Movable tables and chairs in vibrant colors provide energetic accents.  A natural planting scheme includes native and adaptive species such as sedges, ferns, blueberry, pussy willow and sumac.

In bringing residents close to nature and providing them with opportunities to reflect, socialize and be active, these landscapes create a framework for healthy living.

CLIENT: West Side Federation for Senior & Supportive Housing
COLLABORATORS: Redtop Architects

NYCHA HOUSING PORTFOLIO
New York, NY

The Campos Plaza landscape serves the residents of its 269 apartments and acts as a public park, playground and playing field for the surrounding neighborhood in the Lower Far East Side of Manhattan. JPLA developed the site plan and design for a central plaza, building entries, and perimeter streetscape including paving, planting, seating, a playground, and an artificial lawn. The new landscape provides places for people of all ages to rest, play and enjoy. The design language references the site’s history of flooding during Hurricane Sandy, using curved forms to create spaces and direct circulation flows as if carved by water. The material palette renders a sustainable, resilient landscape made up of native and adaptive plantings, permeable paving, and durable site furnishings chosen to last the test of time.

CLIENT: Triborough Preservation LLC
COLLABORATORS: OCV Architects, GDS NY

Winner of the ASLA New York Chapter Merit Award, 2019

Brooklyn, NY

This 800 sf Brooklyn townhouse garden is framed by the large picture windows in the clients’ living room. The curvature of the shapes in the garden draw one’s eye into and through the space. A large paved area of exterior concrete terrazzo with hand ground aggregate forms a central gathering space. Beyond this, an evergreen play space made of synthetic lawn is both low maintenance and permeable. An ipe fence with horizontal members of variable spacing allows for both privacy and for air and light to move between neighboring gardens. The fence was detailed with steel bars to match the terrace railing. To match the fence,  an in-ground sandbox with ipe cover was created for the couple’s young children, with the idea of a future conversion into a coy pond when children are grown. For summer amusement, JPLA designed a water feature in the lawn that shoots water 10 feet high into the air. Water also has its place beneath the garden, where two cisterns collect rainwater from the roof and paved surfaces to reuse as irrigation for the plants.

COLLABORATORS: Red Top Architects

Winner of the ASLA New York Chapter Merit Award, 2019

CLIENT: Undisclosed
COLLABORATORS: CWB Architects

NYCHA HOUSING PORTFOLIO
Bronx, NY

The Bronxchester landscape serves the residents of its 207 apartments as well as BronxWorks, a community-building program for all ages. JPLA’s site design strategies were to strengthen the outer perimeter, soften the spaces within the site, and to increase the variety and quality of the landscape spaces within the site. The design created spaces for individuals and groups, for children, adults and seniors, areas with pedestrian paving and those with lawn or dense planting. The landscape is made up of native and adaptive planting areas, pathways, seating areas, basketball courts with amphitheater seating, playgrounds, community gardens and entry progressions. The result is an open but varied campus that provides a great range of uses and flexibility of experience for the entire community.

CLIENT: Triborough Preservation LLC
COLLABORATORS: OCV Architects, GDS NY

Audubon Houses, Bethune Gardens + Marshall Plaza

Washington Heights, New York

NYCHA PACT is a program that frees funding to allow for comprehensive repairs and renovations of public housing developments, while preserving tenant rights and ensuring permanently affordability. In this project, NYCHA PACT ABM, JPLA provided complete landscape design renovations for the exterior spaces of three NYCHA housing developments in New York City’s Washington Heights Neighborhood, each with unique site features and needs. In collaboration with our client, Dantes Partners, NYCHA, Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, and the consultant team, we are excited to be part of this endeavor that will elevate and enhance the design of the people’s living spaces spaces, cultivate healthy living, foster recreation, and build community.

AUDUBON RESIDENCE

The design for a new play-centered landscape is inspired by birds and nature after the residence’s namesake organization, the Audubon Society. Silhouettes of migrating bluebirds adorn the site’s perimeter fences and signature bird sculptures flank the entry gates. In the center of the playground, a large wood-beam structure has climbing bars and slides in playful pops of color. A designated play space for young children has a mesh hammock, interactive talking tubes and a wood playhouse with slide. A splash-play area with egg-shaped sculptures and in-ground jets gives off a dynamic display of water spray during summer months. Surrounding the play spaces, seating areas with wood benches and tables are sites for parties, homework sessions or a game of dominoes.

The design protects the existing mature canopy trees that provide ample shade and sites for perching. A rich palette of native plants enriches the landscape with textures and colors and support birds and insects throughout the seasons.

BETHUNE GARDENS

Inspired by Mary Mcleod Bethune’s legacy of social work and education, the design creates a park-like landscape that fosters community amongst the building’s retiree residents, their visiting grandchildren, and members of the local community center.

The design activates an expansive, under-utilized landscape while preserving its pastoral quality with an expansive canopy of mature trees.  The organic forms of the plan provide a network of curvilinear paths throughout the property to access a range of amenities and to provide an active walking loop. Nestled within the landscape along the network of paths are dedicated spaces for fitness, children’s play, quiet contemplation and events. The core of the landscape is a central meeting space with amphitheater seating built into the existing hillside.

The plan was designed around prioritizing the protection of its many existing mature trees. The addition of a variety of low-maintenance native shrubs and groundcovers enriches the landscape with layers of textures and colors throughout the seasons. The design also improves security for residents by providing two key-fob entrance gates and clear lines of vision throughout the landscape.

MARSHALL PLAZA

Marshall Plaza’s landscape design draws inspiration from the its namesake, Justice Thurgood Marshall, and his appreciation for rhetoric and discourse. The design brings energy and life to transform the existing inactive cellar and street-level spaces and creates a strong connection between them. Organic shapes creates intimate spaces for conversation and contemplation with curvilinear benches and lush planting areas. A variety of seating options, designed for this pre-dominantly senior community, include sculptural cast stone seatwalls with wood bench toppers and fixed tables with chairs for outdoor parties, games and dining. A grand staircase is a significant addition designed to fulfill tenants desires to connect the lower-level amenity space to street-level. New gathering spaces at the building frontage provide comfortable vantage points from which to take in the life of the city street. Lush planting areas with native shrubs and trees provide colors and textures throughout the seasons and a visual unity to the landscape’s discrete spaces around the building.

CLIENT: Dante’s Partners
COLLABORATORS: New York City Housing Authority, Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, and AKRF (Engineering)

Brooklyn, New York

The design parti for this garden was a pair of nested forms. Directly adjacent to the house, a central paved area made of hand-ground exterior terrazzo is used as a flexible space for dining and playing. Framing this space is a large, grassy mound. The mound is planted with soft, undulating evergreen shrubs that form paths for exploration. Locally sourced glacial boulders were placed as sculptural elements that children can climb and sit upon. The garden is surrounded by a stained cedar fence, designed to blend with the material palette of the building’s rear facade.  Against the dark backdrop of the fence, flowering shrubs, perennials and seasonal bulbs create for a flurry of colors and textures throughout the year.

CLIENT: The Smith Family

New York, NY

The design of this 1,200 sf private garden near Gramercy Park is structured around a curved pre-cast concrete retaining wall. The wall serves regulatory, aesthetic and structural purposes. It was placed to satisfy the required level-yard setback from the ground floor living space. It creates a beautiful enclosure to the space and its form is echoed in stainless steel rings set into the paving. The arc wall supports the upper level of the garden and in doing so, protects two 100-year old sycamores trees that pre-exist the garden.

A stone and steel bridge connects the second floor of the house with the upper level garden and fountain sitting area. The two garden levels are connected by seven monolithic bluestone slab steps. The lower level is paved with hand-ground exterior terrazzo, and features a concrete storage bunker constructed as buttress for the retaining wall, a built-in curved bench, and hanging globe lights. Woodland plantings are layered with a variety of hues and textures that change expression with the seasons.

Client: Kaufman + Truscott

Brooklyn, NY

This 625 sf rear garden in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn is designed as a series of outside rooms furnished in exquisite natural materials. At the parlor level, an ipe wood deck creates a fluid entertainment space next to the house. Broad steps leading down from the deck allow comfortable access to a deck on the garden level, which then steps down to a bluestone terrace. Set into the deck is a steel pergola supported by 9-inch square reclaimed wood posts. Larger truncated posts are built into the deck as seats or planter pedestals.  At the back of the garden, a retaining wall made of reused stair treads in iron streaked solid bluestone is planted with a thicket of wild grasses and flowers.  A red berried hawthorn tree is also planted next to the large windows at the back of the house both to create display and to give privacy to the residence.

CLIENT: Damon Family

Brooklyn, NY

Winner of the 2011 ASLA New York Chapter Merit Award 2011

This 1,200 sf garden in Brooklyn was created as a place to play. The family has three small children and the garden is a place where the ground feels organic and fluid, as it rolls and pitches around one-ton boulders into a central swale. A water source near the back of the garden provides a water display and when the swale is blocked, will create a shallow pool for summer fun. A custom hanging bench provides a place to sit and to swing.  The garden’s mosaic paving of cut-stone marble is good for wheels, easy to maintain, and wonderful to be viewed from the four levels of the house.

Client: Undisclosed