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I’m going to take a little diversion from my usual mode, which is blogging about completed projects. Another topic which I find interesting is beautiful designs that, for one reason or another, are not completed. I think every designer who has been working for some time ends up with a collection of these, and some are memorable stories in their own right, even though they did not get past the design stage. Sometimes creative energy can go beyond budgetary constraints, committee imagination or, in this case, political consistency.
Some years ago, Boulder’s sister city of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, gave Boulder, Colorado, the spectacular gift of a beautiful tea house. Built from 1987-1990, this tea house was given a place of honor in the city of Boulder, near downtown next to Boulder Creek and across from a park.
As a reciprocal gift, the city of Boulder decided to give Dushanbe a cybercafe. In honor of the truly incredible gift from Dushanbe, this cybercafe was to be a gift of some magnificence. One of our top architects, Dave Barrett of Barrett Studio Architects, was chosen to design the building and I was honored to be the landscape architect for the landscape design. So, take a look at what we had cooked up….
 Original plan for cybercafe gift to Boulder's sister city, Dushanbe, Tajikistan This original cybercafe project was to be right on the main drag of capital, sandwiched between the National Library and the Duchanbe Philharmonic building. We designed a mini-plaza in front of an extraordinary piece of architecture based on a solar energy kiva. The whole plaza is based on the theme of water, with three really significant water elements. In fact, passers-by can interact with one of water features by crossing a bridge over the water feature that spirals down into the depths beneath the bridge. There are some high-tech fountains where wave-like patterns are created by multiple jets of water.
However, the whole thing never got built there. We had developed this extraordinary concept for the heart of town. Later, after we finished working through all of this, due I believe to political pressure, the whole thing was moved to the edge of town, to a much less prominent position. So, we had to downscale the whole project so it would be harmonious with its surroundings.
The project featured in this ad just won both a grand and an excellence award in the Colorado Landscape Contractors competition. Click here to see the ad up close.
 Award-Winning Landscape
Here is a sketch of a landscape design I did for a very unique property. This land was a little piece of untouched prairie until a couple of years ago, up against the flatirons with killer views, north of Chautauqua Park in Boulder. The project was a collaboration with the developer, the architect, and myself, from the earliest design stages. It is a spec home that will be on the market very soon.
 Landscape Design Plans for Boulder Flatirons Residence The landscaping involved bringing in hundreds of tons of stone. It’s on enough of a slope so that we could create very interesting combinations of moss rock walls with huge boulders. A soothingly geometric water feature, paving, benches, and a naturalistic rock garden combine sculpturally alongside expanses of wildflower and native meadow. It’s an example of how to set a very large single family residence into a prairie setting, with harmonious transitions from ultra-modern elements to a natural prairie landscape. If you’re curious to see the finished landscaping, check back in a few months. I expect to have some photos in the late spring, perhaps the end of May.
The house itself is extraordinarily modern looking. The architect, Sam Austin, is very creative and does a wide range of architecture. I consider him one of the best architects in the area, and it was a real pleasure to work with him on this project. He designed a rooftop terrace, which provides even more spectacular views.
We’re expecting it to be finished in a couple of months. It’s really one of the Denver area’s few remaining spectacular lots with no previous development. Since the recent reworking of the building codes in Boulder, I don’t know whether anyone could even build a house as large as this one anymore.
 A Denver garden design. This is Bryan Pulte’s personal residence on Polo Field Lane in Cherry Creek. Bryan is a renowned Denver interior designer, and I feel honored to have been chosen to design the landscape for his own home.
All of the usable surfaces for people in this garden are decks. It’s a series of cascading decks with wide double-tread steps. In this case we’re using a combination of a Trex synthetic wood surface and red flagstone, both with a reddish hue. It is a hexagonal pattern, with a hexagonal piece of red sandstone in the middle of the hexagonal deck section and then the border is also in sandstone, as shown below.
 Hexagonal deck of Polo Field Lane landscape in Denver, Colorado It’s a very small, intensely urban, very private garden, designed around and through preexisting large trees. We planted an incredible number of trees to make a veritable forest of river birch in this tiny garden, creating a glen. We also used a small, spring-like water feature with an unusual grey water-shaped moss rock. By cantilevering the paving out over the water, we’ve created sitting places right by the water. It forms a good size pool of water, where you can sit right by it.
 This shows the water feature with cantilevered paving We used ornamentally sculptural furniture, with some big pots both on the paving and in planting beds. We incorporated several kinds of Japanese Maples, including the fine cut-leaf Japanese Maple, and another type of larger growing Japanese maple which is also red-leafed. The picture above shows the triangulation of three different plants that have a reddish hue: one that is grass-like, the larger growing Japanese maple, and the cut-leaf Japanese maple, contrasted with blue spruce.
Since I have such respect for Bryan’s artistic sense and design expertise, it is especially gratifying that he has complimented my work with this quote:
Tom is a true master in his field; he is an inspired artist. There are many people who paint, but there are very few Rembrandts. Tom is one of them. He and Paul (owner/contractor of Changing Landscapes) have created three extraordinary gardens for me.
Luxe Magazine, which focuses on luxury residential architecture and design, recently featured some of my landscape design work with water features in their “Style Makers” section. This landscape design is located in the Lake of the Pines gated community just North of Boulder, Colorado. Here is a quote from this article:
For Altgelt & Associates’ Thomas Altgelt, co-creating with nature remains as important as understanding the soul and spirit of nature itself and the manifestation of that spirit in water. “We generally think of water as chaotic, but it is actually tremendously sensitive,” he says. Although Altgelt has realized his special brand of design in many European projects, it’s the mutually collective creative process at his small, Boulder-based firm that produces his most harmonious work. Altgelt and his team breathe passion into the natural integrity of the landscape in accordance with the archetype of each garden, while incorporating the clients’ needs and ideals. Says Altgelt, “It’s not only sensitizing our clients to their own wishes and desires, but bringing those needs into harmony with the piece of land that has attracted them.” It’s through this unique collaboration that Altgelt succeeds in truly rethinking water as the element of life.
To see Luxe’s professional photography of my work, as well as a brief interview with me, here is the Luxe Style Makers article in PDF format (best resolution). Here it is in jpeg format.
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