OUR PHILOSOPHY
OUR VALUES AND MISSION ALIGN WITH THE GRAVITY OF THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE NEED TO PROMOTE MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION STRATEGIES TO PROTECT AND STRENGTHEN OUR COMMUNITIES.
While our work is concerned with the small or middle landscape and urban scale, we recognize that every action affects the larger planetary landscape and feel that we and our projects can set an example in retrieving the Earth from its climate emergency status.
Urban waterfronts, constructed wetlands, bio-retention areas, coastal reforestations, urban forests, roof gardens, and green infrastructure corridors are among those multifunctional landscapes that we create with passion for their capacity to help our built environment to adapt and mitigate drought, flooding, ocean rise, tsunami and hurricanes, improving the functions and livability of our urban open spaces and disturbed sites.
Designing for climate resilience and risk reduction in all its forms demands a multi-layered and integrated strategy that applies diverse types of protection methods in conjunction to achieve success. Depending on the layered combination of blue, green, and gray infrastructure proposed, engineering teams and consultants with coastal, ecological, hydrology, and oceanographic backgrounds are needed. We have led some of these teams, advocating to private clients, non-profit groups, and municipalities that the investment would provide multiple social, environmental, and economic benefits. However, limited project resources and lack of political will have often forced us to scale down the scope of our work.
WE PROMOTE NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND INNOVATIVE DESIGN WITH THE INTEGRATION OF ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND AND SOCIALLY RELEVANT SITE PLANNING, GREEN AND BLUE INFRASTRUCTURE, SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, AND MATERIALS REUSE.
We also specialize in the design with native plant species from our local ecosystems, which are more resilient and offer greater ecological services than the commercial varieties imported from other tropical regions. We research and apply effective technologies for stormwater management, pervious pavements, soil design (including structural soils and manufactured soils), and energy production systems suited to our tropical conditions, aware of the higher vulnerability of our islands to environmental disasters and climate change events.
WE SEEK TO COLLABORATE WITH ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS WHO UNDERSTAND OUR IMPORTANT ROLE IN LEADING SITE PLANNING WITH PROPER BUILDING SITING AND GRADING DESIGN
In these islands, it is the natural setting of clean ocean water and pristine landscapes, not the built or urban environment, that attracts visitors and residents. We can help the design team balance the impact of greenfield development by siting buildings and infrastructure as integral parts—if not subordinated—to the land, especially when the project is in environmentally sensitive sites, near natural ridgelines, on very steep slopes, or behind wild beaches, achieving a zero carbon footprint whenever possible.
EMBRACING ISLAND STYLE OF LIVING MEANS ACCEPTING THE FAMILIAR, THE IMPERFECT, FINDING INSPIRATION FROM COMMON THINGS.
We are concerned with our carbon footprint and prefer to use local materials rather than importing everything from outside. Our native stone is very hard to work with and traditionally has been used for paving with large mortar joints to avoid costly shaping and cutting. We have perfected this technique by mixing stone from the quarry (usually gray-blue) with stone found on-site during excavation (more brown-gold in color).
We encourage the local tradition of mixing both types of stone for walls and paving, using steel-brushed joints to create edges for shadows that make the stonework look as though it has history. Concrete is the most common paving material in the islands, and we have transformed it by adding integrated color additives, which, combined with saw cuts, recall the texture and feel of sandstone or brick. We have also succeeded in creating pervious concrete for all our permeable paving applications.
CONSERVING WATER AND STORING DRINKING WATER IN CISTERNS IS MANDATORY IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS BECAUSE OF SPRAWLING DEVELOPMENT AND THE LACK OF A DIFFUSED PUBLIC AQUEDUCT. CONVERSELY, PUERTO RICO WASTES ITS WATER TAPPING INTO FINITE RESOURCES, CHANNELING UNDER THE OCEAN ITS WATER SUPPLY AS FAR AS THE VIEQUES AND CULEBRA ISLANDS WITHOUT REQUIRING CISTERNS IN THE BUILDING CODE.
In our site developments, we rigorously specify graywater and freshwater collection as part of the building foundation. We design landscapes that require irrigation only during the short establishment period after installation. Our planting design specifies native and naturalized plant species that are meant to develop and thrive on their own. We rarely recommend traditional grass lawns, favoring native grassland species instead. Our grading, planting, and stormwater designs take into consideration sudden shifts in weather—from drought to inundation—to prevent sediment runoff and soil erosion that harm coral reefs and other marine life during sudden storms or the wet season.
WHEN DESIGNING THE NATURAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE FUTURE TO ADDRESS THE EVER-CHANGING CLIMATE, WE ARE GUIDED BY CHARLES DARWIN’S WORDS “IT IS NOT THE STRONGEST OF THE SPECIES THAT SURVIVES, OR THE MOST INTELLIGENT, BUT THE ONE MOST RESPONSIVE TO CHANGE."
Not only our landscapes, infrastructure and building systems of the future need to acquire resiliency and adapt, but also our communities, our clients, and our professional practice. We can generate strong design concepts from the start driven by our mission, with rigorous design development and attention to construction detail to follow.
But the design process will require more flexibility, more research, more testing, more collaborations, and more modesty, as there is still much to learn. Construction specifications need reinvention with new processes and materials testing. Management operations must address the long-term performance of practices and materials used to support our soils, plant communities, and coastal systems, preventing further impact and degeneration.
Three recent projects that received awards for which we collaborated with Toro Arquitectos are the The Wings of Culebrita, Puerto Rico, with the rehabilitation of plant communities, water infrastructure design, and the “The Wings,” the new technological landscape sculpture-building that will produce all drinking water and energy necessary to run the Lighthouse; the Science City Boulevard, an innovative green infrastructure project that is part of a new educational and medical redevelopment district in Puerto Rico; and Tres Picachos Lodge, where our reading of the steep wooded site affected the way the architectural form and program evolved to have less impact on the land.
