During World Landscape Architecture Month 2018, Toole Design Group will be featuring the themes, projects, and staff that form our Landscape Architecture and Urban Design practice. Tune in to our Instagram and Twitter channels for daily updates, features, and more throughout April!
By Bonnie Moser
After completing graduate school in 2011, I was fortunate to begin my career as a landscape designer working on a wide variety of projects. My projects included everything from park design, trail corridor planning and concept design, hospital rehabilitation garden design, and park management plans, to residential community design, wayfinding, college campus design, streetscapes and urban redevelopment projects. With so much variety, I was able discover what about this work I felt most passionately about: working with the public.
I began working for Toole Design after volunteering for a two-year service in Zambia with the US Peace Corps. This time away from professional design was incredibly valuable to my career because every project that I helped to create or facilitate in Zambia was born out of community’s needs. I had to learn to put the community’s needs above what my own desires and intuitions told me, and it has led me to use the same approach in my work with communities here in the U.S. The most important job I have as a designer is to be a good listener, and channel what I hear into thoughtful designs.
I joined TDG so that I could continue my career with a focus on community development. I place a high importance on working alongside and on behalf of communities in the design process, so that I can ensure that our work meets the community’s needs. I also enjoy working at a company that focuses on making transportation inclusive for all modes and user groups. As a landscape designer, I often facilitates charrettes where I can focus on gathering public input and helping people visualize the concepts and designs. People think and visualize differently, so to be able to graphically represent their feedback into a design is one of my favorite parts of the job.
