BSLA Fieldbook BSLA 2015 Spring Fieldbook | Page 38

BSLA / MEMBER JOE GELLER, FASLA DESIGN COMES FIRST Y oung people sometimes do impulsive things. In my case, it was open up my own landscape architecture practice—just three years out of school! Needless to say, I got a lot of on-the-job training in how this industry works, including a key lesson that has become central to my philosophy as a landscape architect and a businessman: design comes first. As my firm grew, we began to specialize in the permitting and entitlement process, which LAs rarely led at the time. That’s where this design philosophy became especially apparent—design is what should drive the choices made for a site. With that “design first” mantra guiding us, my company grew to about 55 people by the mid-2000s, including a couple of niche services—sports field design and design visualization services—that were outpacing our local Boston market. We were at a tipping point: We needed to expand in numbers and geographic reach or scale back our vision and ambition. That’s when the stars seemed to align at just the right time. The large, multidisciplinary firm Stantec approached us about joining them, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I knew it would give my staff opportunities to work on Started Out Education Now 36 BSLA bigger and different types of projects all over the country. It would allow us to share our special expertise with a whole new body of clients and communities. And, at the same time, it gave me confidence that this business I had built from the ground up would continue to thrive after I’m gone. We’r e a l l i n t h i s t o g e t h e r —e n g i ne e r s , p l a nne r s , a r c h i t e c t s , a nd LAs . While shifting from a firm of 55 people to one of, at the time, 6,000 (we’re now at 15,000) definitely came with challenges, it’s the best decision I ever made. Just as I’d hoped, we do get to work on exciting and inspiring projects all over North America with professionals from all walks of life. But we’ve also been able to maintain our close relationships here in Boston, keeping us rooted in our own community. Personally, I have gotten to be part of a leadership team of a tremendous network of design professionals all over the world, which has certainly expanded my appreciation of our industry and our role as landscape architects in bettering communities. We’re all in this together—engineers, planners, architects, LAs. So the more we understand each other and work together, the better our work will be. But through it all, I hold fast to the idea that design comes first. It’s served me well. Brookline, MA AS UMass Amherst (Landscape Construction); BLA, University of Toronto Vice President with Stantec Consulting Inc.