Patterson Park, one of the oldest parks in Baltimore City, has a rich history spanning some 300 years. The park offers numerous recreational features such as public pools, athletic fields and playgrounds, a boat lake, a skating rink, pavilions and acres of open space for strolling and picnicking. It also contains historic architectural gems like the Victorian Pagoda and Latrobe Marble Fountain.

The FTLA plans for the gateways include colorful native or adaptive plantings, brick walkways paved with the original 1853 park bricks and the creation of a tree canopy to demarcate the entrances. The plans also call for a restoration of the massive sandstone columns at each entrance. The objective of the design is to create a more defined gateway that beckons visitors to the park. FTLA’s plans achieve this by extending plantings further out onto the corners, improving curb ramps at crosswalks and insuring ADA accessibility, and replacing large areas of aging concrete with brick.

Preliminary designs were submitted to the City in spring 2008 and will allow for input from the Friends of Patterson Park, a non-profit membership organization that works to promote, protect and advocate for this community treasure. The Patterson Park Gateways are slated for completion in 2009.

Community Mediation Program is a non-profit organization that strives to reduce interpersonal conflict and community violence and animosity by increasing the use of non-violent conflict resolution strategies and making mediation more accessible. CMP has broken ground on the garden and it will be completed Summer 2008.

Learn more here www.tkffdn.org

Baltimore’s New East Side will eventually comprise an 80-acre, $800 million urban redevelopment effort that combines significant new business activity with new housing and a high level of human services. FTLA is the Landscape Architect for two new buildings in this East Baltimore Redevelopment project. Parkview at Ashland, a new 80 unit senior housing building, and Ashland Commons, a 78 unit workforce housing building. The buildings are separated by a brick courtyard offering a quiet place for residents of both buildings to join together and enjoy the outdoors. The design also includes terraces built off of the indoor community spaces, colorful ornamental plantings, and a walking path. The streetscape design calls for a combination of brick and concrete walkways, tree pits, lights, and signage. Construction complete 2007

Located in the historic Federal Hill area, South Baltimore Station and its new addition serve as a rehabilitation center for those suffering with chemical dependency. While the client and architect chose a program to serve resident needs, they also had an interest in sustainable technology. FTLA designed a green roof for the Station’s new addition that addressed this issue. Beauty, community enhancement, and economic savings followed.

Green roofs save money and this one is no exception. Because the rooms under the roof are better insulated than those under a conventional roof, heating and air-conditioning costs have gone down. Meanwhile, the roof’s heat-tolerant plants, a variety of sedum, eliminate the need for added roof maintenance.

Neighbors of the facility will not be disappointed either. Those who have roof decks will look out and see that the garden has been planted creatively. Sedum comes in a variety of colors and textures, and FTLA arranged several varieties into a puzzle pattern of pinks and purples with a mixture of flowering species. The arrangement gives visual and textural interest for those with a view to enjoy it.
Perhaps most important, the roof will be good for the greater Baltimore region. The rooftop at South Baltimore Station was designed specifically to meet Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Stormwater requirements. Unlike conventional buildings in which stormwater runs directly into the city’s drainage system, the South Baltimore Station green roof all but eliminates the need for such drainage. It filters rainwater and prevents the water from running over an asphalt or petroleum-based roof product. The roof also prevents storm water from outing into city streets and picking up added pollutants. That’s good for Baltimore and good for the Bay.

This project is currently under construction.

Unlike any highway project attempted before, and certainly a first for Maryland, the Intercounty connector (ICC) will increase community mobility and safety in Montgomery and Prince George’s County Maryland. While critics may dispute the advantages of a new highway in this area, project engineers have gone above and beyond the norm to address the ICC’s impacts to local communities and the environment. Among the environmental meditation measures taken, engineers designed the highway with minimum cutting of adjacent forests and provided culverts and bridges so that large and small animals may continue to forge streams. When the box turtle was discovered within the project’s limits, biologists used global positioning satilite technology to locate and track the turtles. The turtles were then relocated for their protection and will be reintroduced to their native habitat at the project’s conclusion.

Working with this interdisciplinary team of biologists, environmentalists, and engineers, FTLA brought the landscape architect’s perspective and knowhow. We designed landscape plantings to attract wildlife to the culverts and introduced earthen escape ramps, assisting deer that venture into the roadway corridor so they can find a way out. To aid in protecting juvenile salamanders, a wildlife fence was placed on the right of way fence bordering the nearby forests. In the more traditional role of landscape architect, FTLA provided roadside planting with native plant material and recreated wetlands disturbed during construction. We also participated in community outreach, preparing renderings and addressing public concerns about potential project impacts.

FTLA is designing a new urban children’s playground located in the heart of the Mount Vernon Historical District. The entry to the park includes a new memorial brick plaza with colorful decorative planters. The main entry off Calvert St. is focused on a piece of sculpture or gazebo structure which the neighborhood is commissioning, a seating area for parents and a large sand box for small children. The park design includes using modern pieces of stainless steel play equipment, a water park designed for small children, new site lighting, and play surfacing. Brick retaining walls with steel fencing will enclose and secure the park during off hours. Construction complete summer 2006.

While most of this project’s budget went into design and construction of hardscape elements, FTLA also used flowering trees to create an oval boarder around the plaza. A new American Elm provides added shading, and grasses are placed strategically along the entry path to give visual relief and draw the pedestrian along.

This garden was established by the New Holistic Ministries as a healing garden for this neighborhood in transition. Despite being constrained by its narrow size- the footprint is a demolished row home - Floura Teeter developed a design that felt organic and would be seen as the foreground for a woodland mural that was painted on the side of the remaining home. The project was completed with the help of volunteers in the fall of 2007.

Learn more here www.tkffdn.org

A 1970s office and retail complex in Crystal City Virginia is the site for this streetscape renovation. Two office towers sit upon a two story plinth, the roof of which was originally designed as pedestrian access to the towers. Service functions were at street level. While the client hired an architect to create three new lobbies within the previous service area, Floura Teeter was brought on to compliment the new entrances with a vibrant streetscape. One project challenge concerned an underground parking garage below the new streetscape, a structure that presented weight and depth constraints. Addressing these constraints, FTLA designed raised planters, crystalline in form, with carefully sculpted berms. The planters provide the necessary depth for the street trees while also incorporating benches for relaxation, lunch, and break times. Again playing off the “Crystal” City motif, the crystalline-shaped planters are carried through into the streetscape’s walkway, with pressed paving patterns that fragment into smaller and smaller crystals.

This project is currently under construction.

Open Space Improvements II

Floura Teeter Landscape Architects was involved in the redesign for a four acre site at the Homewood Campus of the Johns Hopkins University. Currently a mix of roads, sidewalks and utilities, the design was implemented to remove most vehicular traffic from the interior of the site and replace it with curvilinear paths, plazas and plantings. This plaza is situated in front of the college’s student union and provides generous circulation, a donor wall, and ample seating for visitors. Materials for paving include brick, granite and marble band. An allee of trees and broad sidewalks connect the plaza with the lower quad.

The best way to ensure a healthier planet is to teach children about “going green” at an early age. This is the objective for the Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center. Working with Living Classrooms, the National Aquarium, and local communities, FTLA served as environmental consultants on this educational center, a project that demonstrates how sustainable buildings and landscape features can be easily integrated into a traditional building form. Innovative architectural and landscape features will reduce energy consumption in a number of ways. Within the building, geothermal technology supplies the heat source while solar energy heats and lights the building. Special insulation and energy reducing fixtures will also be standard throughout. A key focus of the landscape design will be rain barrels supplying rain gardens and bioretention ponds. Children will be able to use these to study ways in which polluted stormwater can be cleansed through a natural filtering system and contribute to cleaner streams and rivers.