Our mission is to create healthy outdoor places for people to live in balance with nature. We weave the people and places together to enhance life and foster coexistence between people and the natural environment.
Building Community
When Coastal Sage Landscape Architecture was conceived our objective was simple yet bold — to design healthier and better communities through the work we perform. Our strategy worked — our portfolio shows broad expertise designing innovative, sustainable and resilient outdoor places that educate the public about the natural and cultural history of the environment. Parks, trails, higher education campuses, community centers, green infrastructures and other public amenities have been transformed into healthy, vibrant places for people to raise their families and live in balance with nature.
Healthy Parks and Environments
The people living in the communities that Coastal Sage designs are what informs our work…our parks are designed for them. We design for people, and people are diverse — all-ages, multi-cultural, engaged, and they universally appreciate the health benefits of recreation, clean air and water. Our design incorporates abundant climate-appropriate plants and use water-conserving irrigation. Municipal owners are pleased when our parks are designed to meet their communities’ needs with low life-cycle costs, low maintenance and durability.
Green Infrastructure
Connectivity which is safe, comfortable, accessible and inclusive is a community imperative. Without it, a built environment is only islands of disconnected activity. With connectivity including bikeways, greenways, streetscapes and parklets, we create active communities that are vibrant. Moving people safely and comfortably throughout the community injects vitality, builds the economy, enhances livability and fosters resilience. Green infrastructure is the workhorse of the community fabric. It can:
- Slow stormwater to infiltrate into the soil
- Provide tree canopies to store carbon, helping to lower carbon in the atmosphere
- Help address a community Climate Action Plan objectives
Water Conservation
Water is an asset, and we are fortunate to have it fall on all of our projects in the form of rain. Harvesting it for plants, for groundwater storage augmentation and for LID (Low Impact Development), water management reduces pollution flowing into our ocean. We use technology to understand the water assets available, design wisely to capture multiple benefits of that asset, and create designs that fortify the integrity of the natural ecology. Our designs are ecotone appropriate, environmentally appropriate and use irrigation water wisely through WaterSmart and Xeriscape principles.
Campuses and Outdoor Classrooms
The logical evolution of designing healthy outdoor spaces is to create outdoor classrooms. Our university and college campus design uses the complexities of heavily used public campus space to transform it into learning and engaging places. Both informal and formal social spaces where the creativity learned in the classroom can continue to develop through dialogue and interaction is the perfect compliment. Higher education is a full-spectrum experience where learning happens everywhere. Reinventing outdoor spaces for learning can occur in every landscape as smart improvements build on the campus identity and uniqueness.