Altgelt & Associates » Paving Designs

The Hardscape Expertise of Altgelt & Associates recognized by Urban Home Magazine

Tom Altgelt — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:50:05 +0000

As you can see from the lead image of this story, we love using stone, and other forms of hardscape elements to give emphasis and spacial definition to our gardens and landscapes.

This article features the various creative approaches of four leading firms to the creative use of hardscape elements in four distinctly different fields of design and construction. We have had the privelige of working together with each of the other three firms, whose exemplary work is also shown.

We welcome you to view his article, which appeared in early June, at the following link

Landscape Design for Pulte Project on the Denver Country Club

Tom Altgelt — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:46:40 +0000

This landscape design on the Denver Country Club golf course was the first of four Denver projects we did with Bryan Pulte, renowned interior designer. It was a major, major remodel. For starters, we completely tore out the whole existing driveway and part of the related retaining wall, and changed the elevation and grading in major ways.

Before it had been very awkward driving in, as the whole driveway was a straight shot down, creating a very, very poor sense of arrival. Instead, we created a winding, meandering flow that brought you to the arrival plaza. In this photo, you can still feel the curvature of drive behind you, and get a sense of that from looking at the photograph.

New driveway for Pulte project on Denver golf course

Now, instead of the old straight shot driveway that took you immediately to the left side of the house, we created a driveway that curves in such a way that it initially blocks the house from view and then reveals it, giving different glimpses of the house as you enter the property. It’s a long driveway.

We tore out a very large planting bed in front of the front door to create the arrival plaza. In doing so, we sunk the area down by at least 18″ to 2 feet, creating a level plaza. In the photo below, on the right you see both part of the original brick retaining wall and also a new dry stack retaining wall in front. We wanted to keep some of the brick retaining wall for aesthetic reasons, because it reflects the brick used on the house itself. The dry stack wall accomplishes two goals: it is visually attractive and it also covers the foundations of the old brick retaining walls, preventing a frost heaving of those foundations. In some places, we tore out the preexisting retaining walls, building huge freestanding walls to hide the neighbor’s garage doors. This was very tricky in a technical engineering sense.

This is the arrival plaza for the Bryan Pulte project on the golf course in Denver, Colorado

In the arrival plaza above, what we have here initially are some concentric circles, spiraling out into vortical movement. We utilized hand-smoothed colored concrete made to look like natural stone slabs, alternating with precast concrete split-faced cobble. The cobble looks very much like natural stone, with lots of modulation and color, and it also provides a real grip for tires coming down the steep driveway. So it both looks good and it provides a very important function. As the pavement flattens out, it goes into stamped colored concrete. We were working around a lot of mature existing trees to preserve them, another big technical challenge.

Here is a view of the decks and paving for the Pulte project

In the back, up on the left side of the photo above, you see the preexisting deck which had no connection to the ground, so we created a staircase coming down with intricate carpentry bringing people gracefully down from this deck which had been isolated. As one comes down the stairs, one walks around a water feature that is the focal point for this small garden space. The upper pool of this water feature finds its source underneath the staircase coming down. As one gets down to the ground, there is sandstone paving, and then one goes back onto what looks at first glance like a bridge in the photo, but it’s simply a lower deck where one can put a table and chairs. From that deck we look down into the lower pool of the water feature. The lower pool is a deep pool with the deck cantilevering over it. We brought in massive rocks, so it’s a very intense rock and water feature. Again, we were working around huge existing trees, and we had to work these 5-6 ton boulders carefully so as not to damage the roots of these trees. We were really pushing the limits, and had to work very carefully.

From the decks, one looks to the north for a view of the Denver Country Club golf course.

From Primitive to Peaceful: Boulder Landscape Design Featured in Boulder County Home & Garden

Tom Altgelt — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:47:31 +0000

A garden I designed for the Mahaffy residence in Boulder, Colorado is featured in a very nice article in the current issue of Boulder County Home & Garden Magazine. This landscape design was a complete transformation of a mostly wild landscape into a serene landscape with natural themes and plenty of entertainment spaces. Here is just one photo of this residence.

Mahaffy residence, landscape design featured in Boulder County Home & Garden

What makes this article especially interesting are several “before” and “after” comparison shots, so that the reader can really get a sense of that transformation. Mahaffy himself had unique needs for his garden: A successful entrepreneur who recently sold his bio-tech company for $2.9 billion, Mahaffy now travels the world and values his garden as a refuge to come home to.

The Mahaffy landscape design features patios, a stone path leading to a koi pond, a man-made stream as well as a major natural creek, rock features involving large and small boulders carefully placed, and plenty of beautiful low-maintenance plants that thrive in Colorado.

The Home & Garden article also gives a nice expression of my some of my philosophical ideas:

“If I were to pick a theme for this garden–for any garden–it would be the idea of coming to our senses,” Altgelt says. “The garden is a place to feel your own soul in a much larger context of a soul-filled world.”

Here is the Boulder landscape design article, in PDF format.

Prairie-Style Landscape Design in Longmont

Tom Altgelt — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:48:17 +0000

Entry to Longmont Prairie-Style Landscape Design

To show the range of what I do, here is a landscape design project in Longmont, Colorado, that is much more subtle than much of my work. This open, spacious garden has a large arrival plaza that also serves as a paved play surface for kids. There’s a nice combination of precast concrete cobbles and concrete flatwork. A row of trees give a touch of formality, both accompanying the driveway and framing the arrival parking plaza opposite the house and garage.

View of Plaza, Perennials, Low Wall in Background

Another feature that is not very noticeable in the photos is the use of a lot of stone walls to echo the architecture of the house and give definition of the arrival plaza area. These walls form a circumference around the arrival plaza on the north and west sides, set back from the plaza the same distance as the house is set back from the plaza.

Longmont Garden: Dry-Stack Pillar, Wall

These walls are of dry stack sandstone, picking up the architecture of the house. Perennial beds below and on top of the walls add to the subtle yet strong spacial definition of the entry garden area. I’ve incorporated perennials that bloom in a progression, spring through fall.

Gate with Perennials

This garden makes broad, sweeping gestures, with some big boulders of the same materials as the walls here and there in the rest of the landscape. I’ve used more low, long stone gestures of rock rather than upright, vertical ones to fit the lay of the land. The home is a prairie style home with low, sweeping roofs and an open wraparound porch. Just as the architecture picks up the prairie setting with the mountains in the background, the landscape picks up these gestures of the architecture, relating them even more to the gestures of the given surrounding landscape. Taking my cue from these forms and colors, my aim was to further harmonize the architecture with the setting, using the landscape design to accentuate and weave them together even more.

I was describing this landscape design in these terms to a friend of mine, who commented, “You know, Tom, if I were actually sitting in that garden, I believe I would just have such a peaceful, contented feeling and have no idea why. I could pick out certain plants or rocks that I would think are pretty, but I really wouldn’t have a clue about how the whole thing flows together to create this sense of harmony. Now having your explanation of how the various elements all work together, I can get a little glimpse of how you understand and appreciate the landscape, the building architecture, and the surroundings.”

NCAR Landscape Design in Boulder: Alternative 2

Tom Altgelt — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:17:41 +0000

This is landscape design alternative 2 I submitted to NCAR for their rooftop plaza.

2nd Alternative Landscape Design for NCAR in Boulder, CO

This alternative is the most radically different of them all. Its design is aligned with NCAR’s mission of doing research into atmospheric streaming patterns. This mission is reflected in a blue tile wave-like pattern representing water, which is similar in its dynamics to currents in the atmosphere. I gave a presentation at NCAR about water as the element of life, and the fluid dynamics of our design work with its close relationship to archetypal movement patterns in nature. Offices in NCAR’s towers look down on this rooftop plaza, so their employees could look down and see this fluid wavelike pattern–a representation of their mission. However, they chose a different, simpler design alternative.