The Outsiders: Landscape Architects are Not Your Enemies. In Fact, They May be Your Best Aesthetic Allies (Practice‪)‬

The landscape of coastal Massachusetts is a mixture of wooded uplands, rocky outcrops, and long, low meadows that sweep down to the sea. Substantial new homes stand tall on bluffs, their windows filled with water views. Not so the house at Hawk Rise, designed by Philadelphia-based Lyman S. A. Perry Architects. Working with the landscape architecture firm Stephen Stimpson Associates, the design team sited the building 500 feet back from its first, intuitive placement on the coastal bank. The landscape architects gently regraded the land, giving the house a higher elevation and a richly layered landscape as a foreground to the view, and prevented the potential for future erosion problems. "When I look at the land, I see meadows, hills, and valleys," says architect Jill Neubauer, who is married to Stephen Stimpson, ASLA, Falmouth, Mass. "Steve sees the glaciers, the outwash plains, the extra history and layer and structure. He can see how you structure the land the way I see how to structure a client's program. Landscape architecture is building that landscape almost to the equal intensity that we're building the house."