Elysian Landscapes — landscape architecture in Los Angeles
Public
We approach landscape as the medium of the contemporary city.
We envision our projects – hundreds of public and private commissions at all scales – belonging to one continuous habitat. LA’s certification since 2021 as a Community Wildlife Habitat mirrors the studio’s long-standing commitment to the natural environment at the scale of the second largest city in the US. Our starting point is the notion of an elysian or edenic landscape, which translates into our resolve to foster the native habitat in a region where an increasing number of original fragments are under protection.
Our work expresses a relationship with the land in which we operate in dialogue and reciprocity with our environs.Attention to each facet of the natural environment is at the core of our design process. We are faithful to developing unique solutions in the interest of conserving and encouraging a flourishing interface between the land and the native plants, animals, and insects that belong to a place.
Our practice extends beyond our own knowledge base, research, and design approach to embrace the materials and professional expertise we engage and support. The goal of the studio is to implement sustainably and ethically sourced products and materials wherever possible, and to enlarge our sphere of operation to test and adopt new approaches and technological innovations as they emerge. Our team includes landscape designers, architects, and contractors, with botanical and biological knowledge making up the substrate of our inquiries.
Art is central to our history and DNA, motivating us to cultivate a creative approach to conceptual as well as complex technical problem-solving. Exuberant landscapes invite and inspire exploration, stewardship, and delight, yielding wild, unexpected landscapes embedded in the urban fabric. Both public and private projects encourage collective experience at all scales and for all species.
We strive to transform ordinary, unremarkable, or forgotten spaces into bold and original environments.
‘Productive landscapes’, a term most often used to describe working farmland and managed forests, become in our hands comprehensive outdoor environments that simultaneously yield recreation, therapy, performance, celebration, and shared enjoyment.
Through a lens of optimism, we invite the California spirit of living and free thinking into to every project.
Los Angeles – in its messy sprawling urbanism – has always been at the frontier, a testing ground for experimentation and transformation, always rethinking and remaking itself. Every project is cast into the larger conversation about our city.
We are builders, always present and engaged in the making of our projects.
Our involvement in construction allows us to anticipate and implement adjustments and refinements throughout the design and building process, with close attention to the impact of our projects on the flora, fauna, land, and humans that make up an environment.
Gardens are relationships, and our clients, climates, and communities are ongoing collaborators.
Clients and users become involved, connected, attached in ways one can never fully anticipate in advance. We aim to put in place a framework for projects that is durable and sustainable, so that that we are able to hand them off to the next generations of stewards.
Choreographing human experience over time with imagination and richness directs our design process.
For us, careful observation and reflection with respect to human experience is balanced with an active role in solving urban, environmental, and social challenges.
Inward facing private projects can have global impact.
Over the years our audience has expanded, and more layers have been added to the scope and breadth of our work. Our work now embraces entire cultures, communities, and ecologies. An ever-expanding conception of the context for our projects provides much more than merely delight, ultimately initiating a way of living and being in the world that only humans can initiate.
Currently an all women’s team, there are people from multiple different backgrounds. Not only cultural backgrounds, but also varied professional specialties such as horticulture, design, fine arts, architecture, landscape architecture, and more. This contributes to having each person’s experiences fueling projects in different ways, providing deeper understanding. This deep understanding is further encouraged by the process of work in which designers contribute to projects from beginning to end, where each person is heavily involved from the early stages of design through to the building phase.
Elysian Landscapes appreciates not only having different points of view within design teams, but also outside of teams. We are always open to collaborate on projects, striving to open rich dialogues with the exchange of ideas.
Dana Bauer
An unexpected opportunity to work with Judy in 2012 on a Hollywood Masterplan initiated an exciting and lasting cross-disciplinary collaboration that ultimately led to their robust partnership. As an architect, Dana’s work has always focused on the ground as the greatest opportunity for unstructured urban experience and the meeting place of the natural and the constructed realms. Entrenched in the design community for over 20 years, Dana previously worked at Michael Maltzan Architecture, Graft and Gensler NY and has a long history of collaborative work across the arts, spanning fine art, theater, television, and dance. Dana holds a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University and a Master of Architecture with distinction from the University of London, The Bartlett School of Architecture. A full-time design faculty member at SCI- Arc for many years, she continues to actively serve as a guest critic and lecturer at numerous schools of architecture and art. Her work has been selected for exhibition most recently at the Landscape Biennial in Barcelona and the Landscape Institute in London.
Judy Kameon
Judy Kameon is the founding partner of Elysian Landscapes. Her work in landscape design and construction has spanned over 25 years and has resulted in the making of hundreds of gardens. Raised in Santa Monica, California, Judy graduated from UCLA with a focus on painting, a study fundamental to her expressive designs. Soon after graduation, she purchased a property with an adjacent empty dirt lot and the transformation of that space became an obsession, and then a career. With her growing team, Judy continues to explore and embrace sustainable landscape practices. Elysian’s clients run the gamut, from filmmakers, artists, and writers to fashion houses, designers and developers. In tandem with her built work, Judy and her husband, the artist Erik Otsea, launched Plain Air, a collection of outdoor furniture inspired by mid-century modern design. In 2014, they again collaborated on Kameon’s first book “Gardens Are For Living”, published by Rizzoli. Kameon also regularly lectures about her unique design process and experiences as an artist and designer.
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