Blending Authentic Architecture with the Natural Landscape
Adams house
The McCullough team and award-winning architect Mark A Silva have a long history of collaboration, working together to seamlessly integrate custom-residential architecture with the surrounding landscape and design. Silva describes his approach to architecture as creating a place as a direct reflection of each client and their site. His unique style makes each project a fusion of the client’s dreams, the personality of each site, and the authenticity of architecture.
McCullough has been fortunate to work with Mark A Silva Architect on a handful of exciting residential projects over the years.
In 2017, David McCullough collaborated with Silva on Can Deus, a vacation property in La Jolla. This project landed on the cover of LUXE Interiors + Design for the July/August cover feature and was noted to mix a hip, edgy feel with “London Sophistication.”
“Right from the start, his take on what the landscape architecture should be was spot on, and a whole acre of it.” – Mark A Silva, on David’s landscape design
More recently, the team at McCullough has been working with Silva on a residential project in Carlsbad, which overlooks Aqua Hedionda Lagoon and the Pacific Ocean, known as Adams House. We are excited to feature Adams House as the project this month and to walk you through the inspiration behind the landscape, explaining how it meshes together with the private home’s architecture, which will be constructed entirely of insulated concrete forms (ICF).
Inspiration for the Landscape
As residents of the city of Carlsbad, the owner-clients of this project have a strong relationship with nature and a passion for outdoor environments. The architectural design was born organically based on the property’s characteristics and client desires. Being located by the lagoon, the sounds and smells of nature are prevalent, and the views are extraordinary. A main goal of the design is to bring the outdoors inside, and effortlessly blend the two together, mixing modern architecture and materials with the natural beauty of the outdoors.
Sitting on roughly three-fifths of an acre, the design intent for this project stemmed from simultaneously softening the concrete and strong geometry of the architecture while rooting the home in an ecosystem of California natives and drought-tolerant plants.
Experientially, the landscape design is intended to feel as if the client is hiking through nature while moving through their home’s landscape. Imagine birdsong and pollinators on your walk to get the mail or experiencing seasonal blooms on your way back from swimming in the ocean and lagoon. Nature is on main display at this property.
“Guests in Nature” at Adams House
A few of the features of this project include California oak trees in the front and rear yards adorned with themed lighting. Firepits are placed in the front and rear yards as well for gathering with people and enjoying simple pleasures in nature.
Roughly half of the entire site is made up of a drought-tolerant planting palette with California sagebrush, buckeye, poppies, laurel sumac, milkweed, daisies, sedges, and other perennial grasses, flowers, and structural plants that thrive in California’s dry season and delight with fragrances, seasonal blooms, and varied textures.
An orchard walk offers an alternate pathway from the street to the main house by following large stone boulders, which pass through a grove of citrus- and fruit-bearing trees. Instead of occurring in one defined area or garden, these edible trees blend into the landscape, allowing for a looser interpretation of edible farming amid a designed yet natural landscape.
In the rear yard, the landscape design provides for adequate amenity space for family dinners and parties, lounging areas, and a vegetable garden. The rear yard also provides generous space for the owners and their friends to be “guests in nature” with intimate walking paths and seating nooks tucked within a plant-filled perimeter buffer. These natural moments in the landscape are certain to complement the sumptuous and elegant architectural experiences at Adams House, a refined custom-residential project designed for living the California lifestyle in the 21st century.
Adams House is currently being documented for a coastal development permit.
Andrew Schlesinger
Associate
Benjamin Arcia Participates as Panelist at BISNOW Los Angeles Construction + Development Event
Senior Associate Benjamin Arcia sheds light on important topics of discussion as a panelist among leaders in construction and development in Los Angeles at BISNOW’s LA Construction & Development event on Tuesday, May 10.
Mixed-Use
Panelist Q: Mixed-Use is coming back as a way to blend city’s commercial and residential spaces, including affordability. Can you share with us how that concept worked with the San Diego Sports Arena-Midway Project?
Benjamin: First of all, mixed-use has been back. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon either. Midway Village+ is a vision for the old sports arena site in San Diego to infill the nearly 50-acre site with more than 4,000 housing units, a new arena, a soccer stadium, a central park, a school, and all of the retail and office space necessary to support an entire district. Our team’s vision for this site embodies the stance that mixed-use goes beyond conventional zoning categories like residential, commercial, office, entertainment, etc. What these all share is that they are land uses that generate revenue in one way or another.
If we categorize our world this way, we only end up creating new places to fit into these categories. As a result, we end up with sterile places that are solely for consumption. Personally, the idea of the city as one big mall seems pretty disappointing.
For Midway Village+, because we’re designing at the scale of a whole urban district, we are intent on accommodating the many other uses that go typically overlooked: a place to picnic, a place to protest, a place to people-watch, a place to smooch the person you love. These are the free activities that make life more full with texture and color.
For true mixed-use, we need more than just shops and apartments; we need parks, plazas, promenades, and alleys.
The exciting thing is, even on small projects, we can apply this civic mentality down to the lot level. Through things like setbacks and pass throughs, we can make little plazas and alleys. This way we make space for those other uses that bring true life to a place.
Big Data
Panelist Q: How was the change to buildings providing big data capabilities impacted building design? What other trends are you seeing in 2022 post-covid?
Benjamin: I can’t speak on big data, but I can say the most striking change I’ve seen is the public’s attitude toward parking. We’ve been pushing clients to reduce parking counts for years. It’s a tough sell sometimes. However, a few years back, when ride-hailing apps like Uber hit the streets, there was, all of a sudden, a tiny bit of willingness to budge. Then COVID came along and blew the discussion wide open. Since 2020, the hunger for parking space is losing voracity thanks to COVID dining patios, electric bikes, scooter fleets, and ride hailing.
Parking is a tough addiction to break. Historically, we’ve tended to think of parking as something that provides convenience, but in that pursuit, we’ve built an absurd landscape of freeways and parking lots that is ironically terribly inconvenient to navigate in any other way than a car.
I’m encouraged to see how many clients are interested in weaning themselves off parking. We’re master planning an affordable housing TOD of a few hundred units where the parking under the podium is designed to be replaced gradually by retail modules as the neighborhood ripens. I’m delighted to be working with clients that get excited about this kind of stuff. The next American frontier for development is not green fields; it’s black asphalt.
Building Decarbonization
Panelist Q: California is eight years away from the 2030 climate goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions statewide by at least 40% compared to 1990 levels. This recently translated into eliminating gas-fueled appliances and incorporating renewable energy components. For example, the new 2023 building code encourages all electric designs for heat pumps and water heating.
What are the top design changes your clients are implementing to comply with the new code requirements? Where do you think things are going?
Benjamin: I think the switch to building decarbonization is an encouraging move in the right direction. It’s also nice to see how much money the California Energy Commission is awarding to projects that push us forward in terms of energy production, management, and use.
That being said, legislation is the caboose of the train. It represents the bare minimum. We have to leave the caboose, walk to the front of the train, and look down the tracks to get a sense of where we’re actually headed. I believe the next wave is going to be the application of permaculture thinking at the scale of urban design. I urge everyone to look up permaculture when they leave this room.
Bundled in that discussion, building material technology is evolving, and we’re going to see an expanding menu of options in how to make buildings. The excitement surrounding Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) panels suggests that there’s an appetite for materials outside the usual sticks, bricks, and steel.
Rammed earth, cob construction, and 3D printing are promising. We need to source locally, though. We don’t have forests here in Southern California, but we have a lot of dirt. Our palette of construction materials can and should reflect that. Prefab rammed earth is already a thing. We can’t build high-rises out of it yet, but could possibly combine it with CLT and cob construction to move into the next evolutionary stage of architecture. In the 20th century, reinforced concrete opened up a whole new vocabulary of building forms. Imagine what we’ll create together with these new materials.
All in all, it was a great and inspiring discussion proving collectively that education is taking a strong hold in our industry and beyond. We are headed in the right direction for sustainable building practices.
Benjamin Arcia, MUD
Senior Associate
Welcoming Melanie Loria
McCullough Landscape Architecture is pleased to welcome Melanie Loria as its new Marketing + Business Development Manager. Her experience managing marketing teams and initiatives in the design and construction industries is a perfect fit to assist the firm in bringing their marketing to the next level.
Melanie joins McCullough Landscape Architecture with several years of marketing experience in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries. Most recently, she led the marketing department for the NewSchool of Architecture & Design as its marketing manager. She has also worked in various marketing and communications positions with the architectural firms Gensler and Sasaki, and with construction manager at J. Calnan & Associates, Inc. Her experience includes business development efforts, assisting with a firm rebrand, website design and management, social media strategy and execution, collateral design, writing and designing proposals, national and international award nominations, and training junior marketing team members. She has a passion for creative design, project storytelling, and connecting with the community.
As an East Coast native, Melanie earned her BS in business management and marketing from the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston). She also studied international marketing in Barcelona, Spain. She is an active member of the Society for Marketing Professional Services.
Catherine McCullough, President/CEO/CMO of McCullough, states, “Melanie brings a rare combination of experienced leadership and fresh energy to her work. The dynamic in our office has already been greatly enhanced by having Melanie on our team.”