Lutsko Associates is a design driven firm with a great interest in exploring the narrative potential of landscape. Lutsko Associates makes places grounded in their context that create beauty, and incorporate cultural meaning and ecological processes. Our landscapes perpetuate long-term and vital relationships between people and their environments.

Lutsko Associates has long been at the forefront of sustainable design in Landscape Architecture, combining a refined, contemporary aesthetic with sound ecological principles. Our landscape design approach is a focused component of a broad based sustainable design philosophy. Our work begins with site planning. We then specifically address storm water management, materials and resource conservation, soil health, habitat preservation, restoration and development, and energy efficiency through passive cooling and heating. We have been developing landscapes utilizing the principles of permaculture and ecological succession since the firm’s beginning in 1981. In the context of diverse bioregions we incorporate local native plants to restore the beauty and ecological function of damaged sites. We specifically address water usage/conservation and the reestablishment of native plant communities. We are fluent in details such as permeable paving systems, filtration swales, and green roofs that ensure water replenishment and nutrient recycling.

From the firm’s inception, our design approach has been to articulate, restore, and enhance the conditions of the site at hand. We honestly and eloquently incorporate site architecture and infrastructure into the surrounding landscape. We pursue the potential of new materials, and new uses for traditional materials. Our designs encompass elements of the endemic landscape to create places that balance the natural ecology of the site with the needs and histories of its human users – places that engage people’s mind and spirit.