CC Jul-Aug 2022

CASEstudy
Curbs without limits
The one-stop garden design solution, Vectorworks Landmark, has been a crucial factor in enabling
Curbs Studio to win projects
Curbs Studio, a landscape designbuild
firm from Massachusetts,
have shown that winning work is a
constant consideration in the design
process. The firm specialises in
transforming residential yards. "We work
with people who are living in their forever
homes," said Lucas Machado, Curbs
director of operations. "A lot of our
clientele are people who appreciate the
design-build process. They're looking for a
phased approach to developing their
dream home."
These forward-thinking clients tend to
think in the present day while also
anticipating what they'll want their
"personal oasis" to look like, Machado
said. However, bigger dreams require
deeper budgets.
Working with a design/build practice like
Curbs can mean finalising the entire site
design vision at the front end and
implementing additions as budget
permits. "The clients are empowered to
have a greater long-term vision and work
towards it piece by piece with us instead
of all at once, which also ensures that the
final product is uniform," he said.
THE CURBS STUDIO DESIGN-BUILD
PROCESS
Initial consultations occur over Zoom. Here,
Machado and Rong Rong, Curbs' director
of landscape architecture, try to gain a
sense of the client's goals for their site.
Then a site visit takes place to catalog
existing conditions like property lines,
sunlight and shading, and grading. Rong
documents this information in Vectorworks
Landmark, where she'll later create and
detail a site model.
But first, Machado, Rong, and the client
must reach an iron-clad understanding of
development intentions for the site. Rong
uses the Morpholio Trace app on an iPad
to sketch out proposed site elements that
align with the client's initial keyword
indicators - for an ongoing project, one of
these words was "industrial." These initial
sketches can include things like retaining
walls, custom fire pits, porches, or other
site furniture.
Curbs designs predominantly custom site
elements rather than purchasing them premade,
Rong said. Sometimes pre-made
elements don't fit the client's site both
practically and conceptually. Designing
their own pieces, Rong explained, allows
Curbs to be flexible with what the client
wants without being limited by what's
purchasable in a store. It's also a bit of
revision control - engaging the client
frequently about these elements before
modeling occurs, Machado explained, is a
better alternative to spending substantial
time modeling and developing one idea
that may need to be redone anyway if the
client doesn't approve.
Rong, who's responsible for the bulk of
the technical design process within Curbs
Studio, imports approved sketches into
Vectorworks and places them on the site.
At this point the sketches are still 2D; she's
thinking about space, shade, sizes, and
relative positioning as she builds the
Vectorworks file. "It's the magic of
Vectorworks and Rong's talent that clients
can throw out an idea and then start to see
it come to life in the model," Machado said.
Rong takes those initial sketches and
precisely models them in Vectorworks
while simultaneously documenting
information needed to build them. This
data is carried into worksheets that are
linked with the geometry itself, so she's
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July/August 2022