Profile

El Space Design Charrette

WE Design is a New York City based landscape architecture and urban design firm led by Tricia Martin, RLA, LEED AP and Winston Ely, LEED AP that applies landscape architecture solutions to our city’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. With backgrounds in landscape architecture, urban design, architecture, sculpture, industrial design, graphic design, and environmental design, WE Design is able to lead complex projects at a variety of scales that address climate change, environmental degradation, and social risks.

Three principles drive our design process:

  1. Collaboration (The WE in WE Design)
  2. Urban Ecology
  3. Community Engagement

WE Design believes that good design and excellent customer service is a collaborative process. As a husband-wife team we understand first-hand the importance of listening, communicating, and sharing ideas as a critical part of the design process. Our collaborations begin with each other, but extend to our clients, the communities, and the expert consultants that we work with to ensure a fantastic product.

Urban ecology is the conceptual glue that binds our design solutions. We weave ecological elements into the urban environment to address increasing social and environmental risks (what is good for bees is also good for people). We also look to ecology as a way of thinking about design. Strengthening the connections and relationships between individual elements and systems is essential to building a more sustainable, resilient, and beautiful city.

We take community engagement beyond the charrette to seek more meaningful, visceral, and community-specific methods of participation. Using performance, games, and direct outreach, we blur and redefine the professional doctrine—entwining designer and community in a mutual process of education, advocacy, site design, and physical implementation.

Our services include:

  • All phases of Landscape Architecture
  • Green Infrastructure Design
  • Master Planning
  • Urban Design
  • Community Engagement
  • Greenway Design and Planning
  • Design Guidelines
Tricia Martin, RLA

Tricia Martin, RLA

Principal

Tricia Martin is a licensed landscape architect with fifteen years of experience working on complex, urban sites ranging in scale from the region to a small lot. Collaboration, ecology, and community engagement are the principles that drive her practice. Tricia teaches urban design at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and is a studio critic at NJIT, NYIT, and City College. She is regularly asked to speak about issues related to green infrastructure and landscape architecture and is also a past-president of the ASLA-NY Chapter.

Winston Ely, LEED AP

Winston Ely, LEED AP

Principal

Winston specializes in the design of buildings, furniture, and other structures. By integrating sustainable construction methods with close attention to material detail, Winston provides thoughtful, compelling solutions to meet a wide range of design challenges.