THE STUDIO

VACCARINO ASSOCIATES, LLC, is a landscape architecture practice with office in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The firm is the offspring of Vaccarino Associates, Inc., and of Paradigm Design, Inc., both established in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, in 2003 and 1998, respectively, with Rossana Vaccarino as the President of both companies. The first two offices housed a multidisciplinary team of landscape architects, civil engineers, architects, and urban designers.

The San Juan office focuses on site planning, green infrastructure, and landscape architecture. It was established in June 2018 after the devastation caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, with Rossana Vaccarino as the sole Principal and Owner. Located in the heart of the Caribbean, San Juan provides strategic access to the U.S. mainland as well as the Spanish, U.S., and British Virgin Islands, where much of our work is concentrated.

We pride ourselves on the fact that we do not have a signature style but approach each project as unique.  Each project is, in fact, an opportunity for developing our clients or our community’s vision within the unique constraints and opportunities of the project site. We use our passion, creativity, and knowledge to make each site a better place than it was before.

We research, educate, design, build, and advocate. Our multidisciplinary experience—gained from our earlier practice and our work as educators—drives a design process rooted in creative problem-solving across professional boundaries. This allows approaches to projects from different perspectives and with different scales of concern.

We continue today to foster a design process where site planning, site engineering, architecture, and landscape architecture are not approached hierarchically or separately but as professional practices that add value only when used on equal grounds and in synergy.

When working in partnerships and collaborations with other associates or firms, we use teleconferencing and digital environments and are comfortable working or meeting remotely. We are currently creating a satellite unit in the south of Tuscany, Italy, where Rossana directs her work during certain months of the year from a farmhouse that she is restoring. The aim is to be more efficient with work and quality of life during the hardship of hurricane season, and to reconnect with the beautiful, rural countryside of Rossana’s Italian roots.