Thomas Woltz

...commenced studies with a triple major in Architectural Design, Architectural History and Studio Art and then followed with Masters degrees in Landscape Architecture and Architecture.

He has worked on a range of projects, including the Ford Motor Company Rouge River Plant in Dearborn, Michigan and Washington & Lee University Commons in Lexington, Virginia. He is design consultant to Longwood Gardens and primary designer in charge of two of the firm’s most enduring projects - Seven Ponds Farms in Albemarle County, Virginia and Nick’s Head Station (15 years) in Gisborne, New Zealand. He applies landscape design to land conservation principles and his work in New Zealand restoring thousands of acres of wetlands and Tuatara habitat while sustaining a farm has resulted in changed community perspectives on land management.

Woltz teaches at the University of Virginia on ecological system analysis as a generator of design strategies, serves on the The Cultural Landscape Foundation and has worked for five years in Venice.

Through teaching and design, he emphasises the rich dialogue between architecture, landscape architecture, and ecological process. He believes in the powerful role of aesthetic environmental experiences, such as beauty, in re-centering human consciousness from an egocentric to a more profound bio-centric perspective.

Thomas Woltz was recommended by landscape architect Nancy Goslee Power -
‘..He described the most beautiful careful restoration of the land I have ever seen.
I am telling you, as we say in the south, he is the best speaker that I have heard....’

Paper Abstracts

Narratives of Ecology in Contemporary Design – major projects

Featured projects will include:
Asia Trail at the National Zoo in Washington DC
The Dell, winner of ASLA award of Honour, 2009
Luck Stone Design Center, Richmond, Virginia, winner of Virginia ASLA award of Excellence, 2009.
City Garden, St Louis Missouri, opens to the public this coming weekend, June 28.

These projects will be used to illustrate the firm’s process of analysing regional ecology, landform, and dynamics of a site in order to abstract these ideas into forms and legible narratives in our contemporary public gardens. A public landscape has a duty to be a bearer of meaning and to be instructive about natural processes and this concept is central to our public work.

In addition to this very serious agenda, I believe there must be whimsy and fun associated with the gardens.  If people come to understand what is sacred or unique about the place, then they will come to love it and with that, perhaps become greater stewards of their environment.

I will illustrate these concepts with some process sketches, construction images and photographs of the finished projects. The goal is to explain our process as much as show images of finished work. Each of these projects has a unique way of revealing ecological process and a sense of place that should be fun and of interest to everyone.

Narratives of Ecology in Contemporary Design – private gardens

Featured projects will include:
Nick’s Head Station, Gisborne, NZ
The Cedars, Locust Valley, New York
Iron Mountain House, South Kent, Connecticut
7 Ponds Farm, Charlottesville, Virginia
Sea spray, East Hampton, New York

Many of our private landscapes and gardens use local geology, plant communities, cultural history, and landform to tell narratives about the site and region. These projects seek to combine ecological stewardship with deeply satisfying aesthetics to establish gardens that are sustainable, beautiful and responsible. In many of these private projects we have explored alternative land management strategies and sought to integrate active agricultural land use with best management practices for conservation of wildlife, water quality and plant communities. The resulting gardens combine the pleasure of strolling, bathing, and gathering in close proximity to productive, cultivated land that benefits wildlife and conservation and connects the owner to the land. Outdoor showers, bathing cisterns, boating ponds, vegetable gardens, fruit orchard, meditation gardens, rambling collection gardens, dipping pools and wildflower meadows combine to make complex and sustainable working landscapes − all in the context of the private garden.

I will walk the audience through a couple of these projects fully but the rest of the talk will be images of various gardens that combine to provide a general sense of the characteristics of our private gardens and how we design, develop and maintain these landscapes. Anecdotes of family life in these contexts will help personalize the talk as well.