This is the transcript from an interview I did in 2010 with Bella D'Arcy for the British garden website Gardens and People.
Steve Martino is a
landscape architect who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. This follows 30 years as a designer, winning over a hundred
awards, in 2006 he received the American Society of Landscape Architects highest
design award; The Design Medal, He has received a 2010 Award of Excellence from
the Arizona Chapter of the ASLA for his ’Palm Springs Modern’ project. On of
his was recent projects was featured on the cover of the March issue of the Garden
Design Journal.
Q: You originally studied art and architecture, what
made you apply these skills to the man-made environment, the landscape, at a
time in the 1970s when architecture was a boom profession in the States and
landscape architecture practically unheard of?
In architecture
school I had an interest in the space between and around buildings as an extension
of the interior; it was ‘bonus space’ to the building. I thought that all
architects should also be landscape architects. I couldn’t imagine turning over
the site to someone else.
When I dropped out
of school I took a job with a LA to learn some landscape skills. This was the
first time I took a critical look at the man-made environment and I wasn’t
impressed in fact I was appalled.
I loved wandering
around the desert and I was puzzled how little appreciation or respect there
was for the desert environment. After 2 years there I thought I needed to get
into an architect’s office which lasted 2 years until a recession put me out of
work. I had a few garden projects that I was working on so by chance I became a
landscape designer and I have been working for myself ever since.
There were a few
landscape architects in town and scores of incompetent landscape designers; I
worked for an awful design-build company for a few weeks as a student which was
enlightening. It was apparent that landscape design was a situation where one
could spend an enormous amount of money and when finished you could still have
all the problems you started with. I saw an opportunity for a landscape
designer who could actually understand and solve site problems; architecture school
was all about solving problems. One project led to another and I’ve been
working for myself since 1975.
Q: Please talk about your feelings for the landscape
and your ambitions within the field of landscape architecture.
I never had any
intentions of becoming an LA, in fact I have never had a landscape class in my
life, when I started my goal was to bring the desert back into the city. Over
the years I invented the desert vernacular that should have been there but wasn’t.
My design philosophy
originally if I had one, was to make my projects say something about the site
and the region and make them look like they “fit”.
When I started I had
a few observations that influenced my thinking.
The public mostly
hated the desert.
Billions were spent
each year to make the desert look like somewhere else.
Landscape
development was a situation where one could send an enormous amount of money
and when finished still have all the problems you started with. It was mostly an
exercise in eyewash.
In the ‘80s, when
the new robber-barons were building their fantasy developments in the desert LA’s
would stand in line to be their stooges.
I wasn’t ready for
how destructive the landscape industry was to the natural environment.
Q: How
did your design philosophy develop, and how does it relate to the projects you
choose now to work on?
I learned from
observation and trial and error. I started by looking at built work and asking
myself “what’s wrong with this picture?” then I would try to find a better way
to do something. I believe not being trained in landscape design gave me fresh
eyes.
I started using
native plants just too visually repair and connect a site to the larger
landscape (not knowing anything about them other than they looked cool and a
lot of them were scary and would hurt you).
After observing the
benefits of using native plants I decided that all landscapes that weren’t
using native plants were displacing habitat and were destructive and probably
nature hating. Native plants to me represent the state-of-the- art of the evolution
of a place and they are the timeline that connects the site to the history of
the region. If you want to say something about the site you need to us plants
from the site.
I like projects that
are fun and challenging, the most important element of a project is the client.
I want a client who has a good design sense and has high expectations for the
project. I only take on residential
and cultural projects. I have a small office so I can be choosy in what I take
on.
Q: Is there something in your career that altered
your view of landscape design?
Observing the symbiotic
connection between plants and their unique pollinators was amazing and educational.
A pilgrimage to the
Alhambra was pivotal to my development, as I walked around I thought that “none
of these plants are 900 years old. A few years later I was thinking about the
Court of the Lions and I couldn’t remember anything about the plantings even
though I took several rolls of film. I had to get out my pictures, it was no
wonder I had not remembered them, they were insignificant compared to the
space. The lesson was that plants are incidental to the garden and it’s not a
garden without hardscape. The garden should work as a space without plants,
which is probably why I like ruins so much.
Q: How
do you approach the starting point of a design?
There are two
aspects to the design, the first being the clients program requirements and the
other is the site. The starting point is understanding the site, its physical
nature, the off-site influences, its limitations and opportunities, the zoning
restrictions and loopholes. If you understand these things you can tell the
client “I understand what you want but these are the things that you need!”
then we try to do both things.
When I first walk
onto the site I rub my hands together and say “what do the neighbors have that
we can use?”
Q: What is your ideal client?
I want a client who
wants to accomplish something special, thinks garden design is an art,
appreciates the local environment and are open to ideas; it’s a bonus if they
are a little eccentric.
Q: You have an especial affinity with the desert and
the plants that grow there, how do you use these plants in the design?
After observing my early native plant
gardens I noticed that with native plants you get more than you bargained for.
They bring along an entourage of characters that I call “pollinators and
predators” that activate the garden. I discovered that by using the right
plants you tap into the food-chain and your gardens become habitats. When I
learned this, my gardens started to get interesting.
In the early years I
also used native plants to make a point because they were not appreciated by the
public or my peers.
Q: Feel free to
elaborate as much as you like!
I would typical take
ordinary vacant-lot plants and showcase them against architectural elements,
which I would refer to as my “Weeds & Walls” style. I see the architectural
elements as the state-of the-art of my evolution as a designer and the native
plants represent nature at her best. This juxtaposition of man & nature
meeting as equals is what my work was all about.
What I find unbelievable
about this pursuit is that it changed the landscape industry and that my web page
tells me that people from 40 countries a month look me up.
Q: And when you are not working in a desert zone,
what is your philosophy of planting?
I try to use native
plants to attract the local wildlife, which I find delights client almost more
than any of the ‘designed’ elements of the garden. Native plant nurseries are
quite common now. When I first wanted to use lesser known natives I had to
collect the seed myself and have plants grown.
Q: When
you design, does the hard landscaping grow from the planting, or vice versa. Or
do they arrive together in your mind?
For me the hardscape
come first because my gardens are architectural by nature. I think about the hardscape
and tree placement together. Specific understory and accent plants come later.
I work in a very harsh environment, “the old west”, I’m happy if I have the
basic elements of: walls, trees, dirt, shadows and cactus, any thing else is
icing on the cake.
Q: You
work in a country that has huge spaces, and huge skies- not usual in the United
Kingdom - how does this affect your design thinking?
This is ‘borrowed
vista’ paradise. The Sonoran desert is so distinctive and unique that you can
represent the desert with a few plants in a court yard or physical meld with a
magnificent panoramic scene when the property line is actually a few feet
beyond the pool. An adjacent mountain range can look like it belongs to your
client if you do things right.
I see my job as that
of a set designer; I create space and the illusion of space. I screen out bad
views and reinforce good views. If a space has a good geometry to it I enhance
it, if it has a bad geometry, I try to overpower it and impose a new order to
it. I seem to work with 2 types of space. Enclosing and sheltering or open and
expansive where we relate to a larger site, and most projects have both types
of space.
I have always considered
our harsh sunlight as another building material that needs to be considered. It
is so strong that it washes out color and flattens texture; you need to use it
to your advantage. Using forms to develop shadows, using strong colors and
cactus that create their own shadows are lessons I have learned from Mexican
architects. What I love about walls is that they pick up shadows off the ground
and hold them up where you can see them. I think of this as the architecture of
shadows.
Another concern you
need to think about is what materials look good as they come out of the dirt,
stone is first, then cast-in-place concrete then masonry walls.
Q: Can
you talk about how the landscape profession has changed over the years – and
has that affected you?
It is more aware of
environmental concerns now and not as destructive to the planet as it used to
be. I think the profession is a little late to the table on this, in the west,
where water is such a major concern; municipalities had to come up with
regulations to protect themselves from landscape designers.
The biggest change
has been the level of design has skyrocketed as seen by the quality of the
national ASLA design awards. You have to work really hard to receive a design
award these days.
I was the oddball
when I started and over time I have gone from being a heretic to a hero without
doing anything different. I read in an article about me that said I had to
build my stage before I could act on it.
Q: You
were Steve Martino and Associates; how did you work as a team?
At one time I hade 9
employees and I was more of an administrator than designer and I did not like
it, since then I have tried to stay small and I do all the design work myself and
I have staff members to help with production work, I always look for ideas and input from my staff.
Q: and why the name ‘Cactus City Design’?
Several people have
asked me why I am changing my firm name to Cactus City Design after nearly 30
years of being Steve Martino & Associates. The truth is that SM&A was
not my first or second choice for a name. I wanted something that referred to
what I do or to design. My first company name was “Outdoor Space”. I decided to
market myself to architects as a consultant, but after the fourth consecutive
architect said “what the hell is outdoor space?” it was clear that I needed
another approach.
Somewhere I read
that the Apaches had a word for “the wet wind from the south”. These life-sustaining
summer rains that come up from the Gulf of Mexico to make life possible here
would be the perfect name for a company that wanted to embrace the native flora
in its designs. I never found the word so I became SM&A as a default. For
years I had thought about a name change; SM&A has worked well for me but I
always wanted a name with “studio” or “design” in it.
One evening as I was
driving across the desert back to Phoenix from one of my Palm Springs projects,
somewhere between Bagdad and Quartzsite where the highway department puts out
the water barrels, I stopped to let my radiator have a drink. As it cooled down
I walked off down a dirt road to explore the ruins of an old building which
might have once been a gas station. Walking through the ruins was like rooting
through the carcass of an old decaying Saguaro looking for it’s “boots”. I
found a bullet-riddled sign that looked like it said “Cactus City”.
Two weeks later I
had a dream about something that I had completely forgotten about that happened
over forty years earlier when I was a teenager at Arizona Boys Ranch. I had the
job of ranch wrangler and had 24 horses I had to tend to. One of my duties was
to take the other kids out riding in the desert. I used to visit a crusty
hermit type who lived in a “baked ham” trailer. He had an assortment of
wheel-less car bodies, some metal shade structures, quite a cactus garden and a
hand-painted sign that said “cactus city”.
Going from an urban
delinquent to a rural ranch hand was quite a life-changing experience. My
favorite pastime was riding in the nearby San Tan Mountains. I think these
excursions got me interested in the desert and led me to become a landscape
architect. Now, decades later, having “cactus city” pop up in a dream two weeks
after my trip across the desert had to be a sign.
Q: If
you could design anywhere in the world with an endless budget, where and what
would you design?
I’d like to be
designing houses in Majorca and next would be roof top gardens in London,
because I think that’s the most interesting work coming out of the UK.
