Advancements at Carducci Associates / Joel Franceschi Promoted to Design Coordinator

We are happy to announce the promotion of Associate Joel Franceschi to Design Coordinator! After three years of contributing to and managing many projects at Carducci, we recognize Joel for his proficiency in skills essential to leadership in landscape architecture practice today, from representation and professional communication with colleagues, consultants, and clients, to construction methods and code.

One of the best talents Joel brings to the office is his vast knowledge of soils and plants, as species, aesthetic elements, and life sensitive to highly specific environmental conditions. His love of native plants, especially those supporting pollinators, is evident throughout all of his school and residential projects. Alpine meadows and the Santa Cruz Mountains have long provided Joel with a rich inspiration, before studying landscape architecture at UC Davis and working at a residential landscape architecture firm in Santa Cruz.

When he isn’t coordinating, Joel can be found caring for and experimenting with his rapidly expanding collection of unusual orchids and other friends that are beginning to engulf his desk.

In the News: Don Biddle Community Park & Fallon Sports Park / Landscape Architecture Magazine's April 2019 Issue

We’re delighted to have our work on the aesthetics and function of sports parks featured in the April issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

“Clash of the Terrains,” written by contributing editor Timothy Schuler, details an ongoing project of Carducci Associates’ to balance the performative and technical standards of athletic fields with ecologically sensitive and place-making planting design. The high contrast between a sense of order and a sense of wildness has been a common thread in our park projects in Dublin, California—notably Fallon Sports Park and the forthcoming Don Biddle Park.

In celebration of World Landscape Architecture month, the April issue of LAM is free in digital format to all. The issue is available here; or click here to jump straight to the article.

Combining Infrastructure and Place-Making in Civic Space / Friends of Five Creeks Features El Cerrito City Hall Design

This month’s atmospheric river in Northern California is an apt backdrop for the San Francisco Bay Area blog Blue-Green Building: Building Cities that Protect Streams, Bay, and Ocean feature on Carducci Associates’ El Cerrito City Hall. The civic space highlights the ability of landscape architecture to create ecological and hydrological systems as stormwater management infrastructure that also contributes to a sense of place and regional identity.

El Cerrito City Hall, built in 2010, consists of a LEED-certified building and landscape that are designed to complement each other. Recycled building and site run-off irrigate the California native plant demonstration garden and drought-tolerant plantings. Custom furnishings include a fountain inspired by the journey of water that travels from the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific Ocean.

The full article can be read here, and more information about our project is available here.

Blue-Green Building is written by Friends of Five Creeks, “an all-volunteer creek- and watershed-restoration group working in North Berkeley, Albany, Kensington, and south El Cerrito, and Richmond, Alameda, and Contra Costa Counties” in California.

Innovation Project Winner for the Silicon Valley Structures Awards / Cupertino High School Science Complex

One year ahead of schedule and $3 million under budget, Cupertino High School’s new science complex received the 2018 Silicon Valley Structures Award for its Innovation Project category. The Fremont Union High School District worked with our team to bring new facilities, including outdoor classrooms, to the school’s growing STEM curriculum and enrollment.

Silicon Valley Business Journal explains the factors that led to these successes in the following article, originally published here.