Architects & Custom Designers of Homes Embraced by Livable Gardens

Living in a
"GardenHome"
is like living
a dream come true!

Come on in, have a seat ...
and let's talk about joining forces to bring
Custom Residential & Garden (Landscape) Architecture
"Back to Life"!

Our Professional Heritage ...

     From 1880 through 1955, our professions created better than 10 million middle and upper income, single family, detached homes and gardens in a wealth of different architectural styles more than 60% of which still stand, to this day, gracing the streets of such older cities and towns as Alexandria, Annapolis, Baltimore, Bethesda, and Chevy Chase in the Washington, DC Metro area, of Brookline, Cambridge, Marblehead, and Salem in the Boston area, of San Francisco, of St. Louis, and of countless hundreds of other such cities and towns all across the USA and Canada.

    On your drive back to the every-day world in which you live, it all of a sudden hits you, like a ton of bricks, that you now find yourself driving through post 1955 "Real Estate Developments" composed of street upon street and row upon endless row of equal sized, cookie-cutter, style-less houses that all, somehow, look as if they popped straight off the same CDC (Corporate Design Committee) drafting board.
   ● That you pass by thousands of houses that are neither out and out ugly nor (heavens forbid) breathtakingly beautiful.  In fact,  that you go through entire neighborhoods where "Good Taste" and "Bad Taste" seem to have been outlawed and where "No Taste" is celebrated as superb.
   ● That you travel through "Upscale" neighborhoods where "bigger is obviously better" and the "biggest are the best".
   ● That since 1955 no truly new architectural styles have emerged that will enrich our cities, our towns, and our lives with their beauty and utility for generations to come.
   ● That, like it or not, all of us may have to live for the rest of our lives in an architectural wasteland filled to the brim with millions upon millions of look-alike houses standing along boring, cold and uninviting streets that have all the personality, charm and warmth of a "well landscaped", mini "office park" or a shopping center, take your pick.
    Welcome to 21st Century, "Residential America"!

    As matters stand now, more than 75% of all of those who still practice our arts on a full time basis in metropolitan areas, say that they count themselves lucky if they can NET more than $110,000 annually.  To do that, they say, they have to work about 54 hours a week mainly on renovating and remodeling jobs with an occasional new home thrown in.  "Heck",one remarked; "that's about $40 an hour.  Tell me, when was the last time you paid $40 an hour to have your car fixed or your plumbing repaired?  Talking about us being "Elitist'!"  As a result, ever increasing numbers of us are leaving the fields causing the state-of-the-art of residential and garden (landscape) architecture and design to plummet accordingly. 

    Well, the "Production Housing Industry" (PHI) is what "happened"! Since its birth in the mid 1950s, the "PHI", now totaling some 500+ firms led by such giants as Centex, D.R. Horton, KB Home, Lennar, and Pulte, and fueled annually by some 8 BILLION dollars worth of newspaper, magazine, and internet advertising, has captured the lion share (±85%) of the single family housing market.  In the process its has put more than 1,000 small home builders out of business and virtually destroyed both our professions by letting the home buying public know that custom architects are "elitist snobs" whose services are so expensive that only the fabulously wealthy can afford to engage them to design and build their (over priced) palaces!  (Go to our:
"Top 150 PHI Firms" page to get a feel of what we are talking about here!) 

     Another thing that happened" was that, under the pressure of this competitive onslaught, more and more members of our professions began to let the quality of their business and design practices slide. Truth to tell, by competing only with each other and by copying what the "PHI" has to offer (i.e. by tacitly accepting their "products" as the "standards" against which ours should be judged – which they are definitely NOT – and then by skimping on the quality and the quantity of the services which we can be expected to offer, we all have played (and continue to play) right into the hands of the "PHI".  Hence the steady decline of custom residential and garden (landscape) architecture as economically viable and socially creative professions and art forms.