Welcome to the McCullough team, Polina Karake!

McCullough is thrilled to welcome Polina Karake, Int’l ASLA, Associate, to our team of designers. With a rich tapestry of experience and a passion for crafting spaces that resonate with the human spirit, Polina embodies the ethos of our collaborative and creative practice.

Polina's journey began in Israel, where her love for design was ignited. With a bachelor's degree in landscape architecture and a master's degree in industrial design from the esteemed Technion Institute of Technology, Polina emerged as a luminary in her field, graduating Cum Laude.

With over 15 years of experience as a licensed landscape architect in Israel, Polina has honed her craft across projects of varying scales, from intimate patios to expansive neighborhoods. Her expertise in design and construction supervision is matched only by her unwavering commitment to shaping urban environments that enhance the everyday lives of individuals.

As a visiting faculty member at the Technion Institute of Technology's studio of Urban Design, she has shared her knowledge and insights, nurturing the next generation of design innovators. Additionally, her contributions as a freelance landscape advisor to architectural projects have enriched the integration of outdoor spaces within built environments, further cementing her reputation as a thought leader in her field.

Driven by her observations of Israel's unique challenges—a small, densely populated country with limited land resources—Polina's work is characterized by a commitment to creating vibrant public spaces that prioritize sustainability and functionality. Her specialization in designing open areas tailored to hot and arid climates underscores her dedication to addressing the evolving needs of communities.

Polina's multicultural background, coupled with her passion for travel, enriches her perspectives and fuels her creative vision. Fluent in three languages and with a penchant for exploration, she brings a global outlook to her work—a testament to her belief in the power of diversity to inspire and innovate.

As we celebrate Polina's arrival, we look forward to the invaluable contributions she will make to our collaborative practice. Her vision for fostering positive change through better-designed environments aligns seamlessly with our commitment to merging the human spirit and nature with grit, soul, and style.

We invite you to join us in welcoming Polina Karake to McCullough!

---

A Sculptural Evolution and the Urban Revival of Bay to Park Paseo

San Diego has a rich history of site-specific sculpture and minimalist installation art. Following in the footsteps of Robert Irwin, Roman de Salvo, and Michael James Armstrong, the Journeyworm is a hanging sculpture that plays subtly with light and opacity. It hangs at the temporary entrance to San Diego High School, between old Eucalyptus trees. Each day, hundreds of students walk under the sculpture’s swaying panels.

Benjamin Arcia of McCullough Landscape Architecture led a team of fellow designers in the creation of this piece. The sculpture is made of fishing line, cable rigging, fishing weights, mosquito screening, and clothespins, all materials that relate to Benjamin’s childhood in Miami.

The Journeyworm was originally conceived as a cocoon-like structure that referred to the metamorphosis of being in high school. However, as the Journeyworm team began experimenting with materials, they found that the story and the form of the sculpture was changing of its own volition, a sort of Ouija board in three dimensions. The cocoon narrative fell away, and the art piece that emerged came from spending hours playing with cables and fabric in the back patio at Futuro.

Special credit is due to Mario-Ezequiel Magallanes and David McCullough, without whom this project could not have been possible. Additional input and help came from Haneen Khater (DBRDS), Diane Borys (Noctiluca), and David Michael (TECTURE).

Come visit the Journeyworm at different times of the day to commune with its swaying grayscale gradient and lose yourself within its shifting topographic patterns. Rumor has it that if you stare at it long enough, you can see the primordial moment just before the Big Bang and the creation of time and space.

The Journeyworm design process

The Bay to Park Paseo Initiative: Cultivating Urban Connections

In a nod to visionary urban planner John Nolen's 1908 vision, the Bay to Park Paseo Initiative breathes new life into San Diego's urban landscape. Championed by a coalition of community leaders, this initiative aims to rejuvenate Park Boulevard, bridging the gap between San Diego Bay and Balboa Park.

Thirteen teams, each with their own distinctive vision, are transforming Park Boulevard into an outdoor gallery, igniting the streets with temporary art installations alongside the Journeyworm. This vibrant endeavor is part of the San Diego-Tijuana region's World Design Capital program, celebrating creativity and culture.

"Creating enjoyable walkable streets produces many benefits for health, happiness, safety, and property values," remarks the Bay to Park Paseo team.

Led by the dedicated efforts of volunteers from Urban Interventions and the Downtown San Diego Public Spaces Foundation, a division of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, the Bay to Park Paseo promises an immersive pedestrian experience. Co-creators Pete Garcia and Beth Callender envision a revitalized Park Boulevard as a gateway to San Diego's crown jewels, fostering a sense of community and connection.

With three projects already unveiled and the grand opening slated for April, anticipation mounts for the transformation of Park Boulevard into a vibrant cultural corridor, echoing the Journeyworm's luminous path. Stay tuned for further updates as San Diego embraces its artistic evolution, guided by the intertwined spirits of art, innovation, and collaboration.

Read more about the Bay-to-Park walking experience here.

View the vision for each block of the paseo here.

---

McCullough is celebrating 25 years!

This year, McCullough celebrates our silver anniversary, bringing 25 years of “perfectly imperfect” landscape design to San Diego and beyond. Over the next year, we will be reflecting on our journey as a firm, the progress of natural design, and a look at what’s to come.

We hope you will join us as we celebrate this incredible milestone. Stay tuned for an announcement coming soon about a celebratory event to mark your calendars.

---

Navigating Wildfire Resilience at the ULI Resilience Summit

Excitement is building as the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Resilience Summit approaches, set to take place in New York City on April 12th, 2024. David McCullough, Principal Landscape Architect, and Andrew Schlesinger, Associate Landscape Architect, will be attending and facilitating a roundtable discussion on Wildfire Resilience and Fire-Adapted Communities, offering a unique opportunity for collaborative exploration and knowledge sharing.

The roundtable, strategically scheduled during lunchtime to encourage informal networking, promises to delve into pressing issues surrounding wildfire resilience. Attendees can anticipate a rich dialogue informed by recent work and writings, including insights from Maha Balachandran’s article on the subject. Central to the discussion will be the concept that fire-smart buildings must be complemented by fire-smart landscaping, emphasizing the importance of strategic planning and mitigation efforts.

Participants can look forward to exploring best practices in defensible space, innovative approaches to fire safety, and the latest updates in fire policy. The roundtable aims to align sustainable development and design strategies with the realities of increased fire risk in our modern age. By fostering collaboration and sharing expertise, this session holds the potential to catalyze actionable solutions and drive progress in wildfire resilience efforts.

McCullough is proud to support the ULI 2024 Resilience Summit. For more insights into climate resilience, check out Andrew Schlesinger's takeaways from last year's ULI Climate Resilience Summit and Spring Meeting.

Register for the ULI 2024 Resilience Summit here.

---

The Greening of Urban Space

Landscape architects are uniquely positioned to advocate for and implement the successful greening of the urban realm. Specifically, trees are the powerhouses of livable, vibrant, and healthy spaces. Our profession moves beyond policy and the written word and is charged with the implementation of this precious resource on every project to achieve the many benefits they provide to our communities. Three of the most critical benefits trees offer are health and wellness, ecological resiliency, and climate adaptation. 

Health and Wellness

Trees are essential to promoting the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities, as well as the health and wellbeing of our natural environment. Green streets, for which trees are a critical component, can be considered green infrastructure. Such ‘green’ infrastructure offers environmental, social, and economic advantages in several ways: Skin cancer is mitigated through shading; a green environment reduces asthma, lung infections, colds, and eye irritation by cleaning the air and lessening the impact of smog; trees also calm vehicular traffic, thus enhancing pedestrian and bicycle paths by making them safer and more enticing to use; lastly, trees can remove critical toxins from the environment such as sulfur dioxide, cadmium, nickel, and lead, among others.

Poway Commons Town Center Plaza Park, Poway, CA

Ecological Resiliency

Per the Urban Landscape Institute’s (ULI), 2002 publication Planning for Extreme Heat in San Diego County, roughly 13 percent of all land within American cities is covered by trees when they could support four times this amount. Tree roots are critical to the performance of trees allowing them to absorb and contribute nutrients to the soil, communicate with other trees via mycorrhizal relationships, and respond to localized adverse conditions.  Surprisingly, tree roots spread two to four times further than the width of the canopy and are concentrated in the upper 12” of soil. Trees, like all other living things, need food, water, and nutrients to survive. They make their own food through photosynthesis, using energy from sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide (CO2) to create sugar that is used to fuel the rest of the tree. Water is carried from the roots to the leaves through xylem cells. Roots store essential food reserves needed by the tree to produce leaves in the spring. It takes a few years for a tree to complete its roots system, growing surface roots horizontally and only a few anchoring roots vertically.

Poway Commons Town Center Plaza Park, Poway, CA

There are clear advantages to keeping mature trees in urban environments over planting new ones. Mature trees provide instant benefits. Their large canopies offer shade, reduce glare, and enhance aesthetics without waiting for years of growth. Older trees have well-developed root systems that contribute to soil stability, stormwater management, and nutrient cycling. Mature trees also already host various species of birds, insects, and other wildlife due to their complex structure and longevity. 

We discussed the topic of mature trees in more detail in our February 2021 news blog article, Trees as a Valuable Resource in Development: “While species are significant, size matters, too. Since carbon storage is directly correlated to the amount of biomass, a key factor in capturing the most carbon in our cities lies in the existing trees because the green infrastructure is already there. The larger the tree, the greater capacity it has to make an impact in the air pollution. Don’t take comfort in planting new trees to replace the demolished ones. The new 24-inch or 36-inch boxes are not going to cut it. Old tree growth is not replaceable.”

Mature trees positively impact property values by beautifying neighborhoods and creating desirable living environments. Therefore, the practice of removing older trees and planting new does not always serve the immediate needs of the community. 

Restaurant Depot, San Diego, CA: Planting in various locations, such as a parking lots, proves beneficial for climate mitigation and adaptation, and overall human health.

Planting in various locations, such as a park, streetscapes, parking lots, and outdoor amenity spaces, proves beneficial for climate mitigation and adaptation, and overall human health. However, during dry periods, compacted soils and manmade toxins can make for unfavorable root growing conditions. This increased soil density and poor growing conditions leads to roots that are less able to penetrate the soil and generally form in a shallow and malformed pattern. Despite challenges such as compacted soils and competition for space, effectively managing root systems can improve the viability of trees.

Adequate root space and soil volume are crucial, requiring thoughtful engineering considerations, root management, irrigation, drainage, aeration, and support measures. In practice, giving trees enough root space through structural support using structural cells or soil can allow trees to be healthy and develop large canopies. Adding root barriers helps to mitigate damage around foundations, concrete, and pavers.

Climate Adaptation

As irregular and unforeseen climate events continue to express themselves across the globe, dense tree canopy and extensive tree roots can serve to help mitigate the negative effects of such events. Established trees, through transpiration and evaporation, mitigate urban heat islands, acting as sustainable coolants. Each well-established tree can have an impact equivalent to 10 air conditioners, contributing to challenging CO2 reduction targets. To meet the Climate Action Plan (CAP) per County of San Diego 2017, targets of 15% canopy cover by 2020 and 35% by 2035, the urban tree canopy assessment data must be analyzed at a fine scale to identify opportunities, as well as programs or strategies, to preserve and grow tree canopy. San Diego recently received $10 million in federal funds to enhance the city's urban forest, and Mayor Todd Gloria said this funding will be put toward the 2035 CAP goal. Specifically, this grant is estimated to plant and preserve 8,400 trees, with an emphasis on underserved communities. City residents can find details about the city’s urban forest plans and also request a free street tree by filling out an application at sandiego.gov/trees.

Robust Ginkgo trees line the walkway at biotech campus, GradLabs, in La Jolla. Ginkgo trees have the ability to capture 105.8 lbs. of carbon per tree, per year.

The integration of green urban spaces, particularly through tree planting, brings multifaceted benefits. Trees serve as effective carbon absorbers, sequestering carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. Streets with trees are 3°F lower temperature than unforested urban areas per (EPA United States Environmental Protection Agency), additionally UV exposure is significantly lower. A single mature tree annually absorbs 21.6kg of CO2 and provides enough oxygen for two people. They act as natural anti-flood reservoirs, with 100 mature trees capturing 1,137,500 liters of rainwater, reducing stormwater runoff by 2% for every 5% tree cover in a community.

Implementation

Proper planting of trees is critical for their long-term health and resilience. A few key strategies to consider when planting trees are soil biome, soil structure, irrigation, and micro-climate. The soil biome, or soil microbiome, consists of diverse microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and protozoa, which play a vital role in nutrient cycling, organic matter decomposition, and overall soil health. Soil structure refers to how soil particles clump together. Well-structured soil for trees allows for water infiltration, root penetration, and aeration. If one has compacted or poorly drained soil, it is suggested to amend it by adding organic matter to improve its structure. After planting, adequate water must be provided to help the tree establish its root system. While water conversation is key, and many trees can do well with low water, it is important to water deeply but infrequently to encourage deep root growth. Even after the first few months, weekly irrigation is key until the tree is fully established. Micro-climate considerations include sun exposure, wind direction, tree structure, rooting space, and positioning.  Thoughtful planning and proper planting techniques set the stage for healthy, thriving trees that benefit a city’s community and the environment.

San Diego City College, San Diego, CA

McCullough Landscape Architecture endeavors to achieve the highest good in conservation through our implementation of green urban spaces, thus providing more opportunities for our communities to connect with nature. Trees serve a critical role in that pursuit and features heavily in our design work. Through our mindful practice we merge context, creative passion, health and wellness, ecological resiliency, and climate adaptation through the use of urban trees. In this way we seek to root our work in empathy, community, and the human spirit.

Resources:

• The City of San Diego has a plethora of useful and informative links to planning documents, City Council policies, and City Municipal Code on the following landing page: sandiego.gov/trees.

• One important local community-based organization providing resources is Tree San Diego. They often collaborate with other public and private agencies to provide San Diegans with free trees. Visit them at treesandiego.org.

• On a State level, the California Urban Forests Council's mission to expand the health, vitality, and condition of urban and community forests has resulted in significant impacts for many Cities. Visit their Resources page here, caufc.org/resources.

• On a national level, Sustainable Urban Forests Coalition does incredible work educating and advocating for trees. Visit their resources page for more information sufc.org/resources.

• San Diego Regional Urban Forests Council (SDRUFC) is a member driven coalition of agencies, businesses and educators working to improve our urban forest assets. They promote the benefits of trees for a cleaner, healthier and more prosperous San Diego region. Visit their website here: sdrufc.com.

Adis Tutusic
Junior Associate

Adis, a Bosnia native, holds both a bachelor’s degree in Horticulture and a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Sarajevo. He has gained diverse experience in landscape architecture, notably leading the design of a resort park themed after Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” ensuring meticulous implementation of the artistic vision.

Zeek Magallanes
Studio Team Leader

With a master's degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Southern California, Zeek brings over eight years of industry experience characterized by steadfast leadership and accountability. He is deeply passionate about the convergence of urbanism, social and environmental resilience, and the intricacies of design entrepreneurship.

---