{"id":240163,"date":"2018-05-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/connecting-people-to-places\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T07:00:00","slug":"connecting-people-to-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/connecting-people-to-places\/","title":{"rendered":"Conectando personas con lugares"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Delle Willett | Arte en la Tierra<\/p>\n

Leigh Kyle grew up drawing and playing outdoors in the Hudson River Valley, an area with very interesting topography and geology and the birthplace of the Hudson River School of painting. Perhaps this is where she became interested in creating memorable places.<\/p>\n

After graduating in the mid-\u201980s from Swarthmore College with a degree in religion and film studies, Kyle spent more than 10 years building film sets, mostly on period films on location up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Research and detail-oriented driven, with an education in vernacular architecture and landscape, and thinking about how people live \u2014 this type of work suited her well.<\/p>\n

\"Connecting
Leigh Kyle, Spurlock Landscape Architects<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the \u201990s, while earning a master\u2019s degree in architecture from Columbia University, Kyle discovered what interested her the most is the relationship of building to site.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad I gone to a school with programs in both architecture and landscape architecture, I likely would have made the switch to landscape architecture,\u201d Kyle said.<\/p>\n

Landscape architects have the opportunity to create places that people attach themselves to. Places they return to again and again, places that evoke a sense of place and connection to a place. Landscape is the cohesive, connecting element on a complex site, explained Kyle.<\/p>\n

After graduating from Columbia, Kyle worked at Quennell Rothschild and Partners, a landscape architecture practice in New York specializing in campus and public realm projects. One of her first projects was designing animal enclosures for the redesigned Tisch Children\u2019s Zoo in Central Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public-approval process for this was extensive and the degree to which people felt passionate and proprietary about their park \u2014 both from the perspective of the historical significance of Central Park as well as their personal and unique connections to it \u2014 really resonated. I committed myself to doing public open-space work as much as possible,\u201d Kyle explained.<\/p>\n

\"Connecting
The Embarcadero (Photos by Delle Willett)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kyle said she feels that an interesting aspect about working in San Diego and its environs is that it is a comparatively new city and still evolving. Will it go the sprawling route of Los Angeles or start to go denser, improve traffic, etc.?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the sense that the die is maybe not yet cast and good urban planning and design can have an impact. San Diego also poses a ton of technical challenges: terrible drainage, no water, salty soils, hardpan, all of which keep us on our toes,\u201d said Kyle.<\/p>\n

Today Kyle works at Spurlock Landscape Architects, on Hancock Street, near Old Town where she became an owner (principal) with Andy Spurlock, Brad Lents and Yu-Ju Liu in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a design firm with a very long and strong legacy of thoughtful work in our region. I\u2019m very proud to be a part of this body of work, marrying good design thinking to public and civic problems large and small, finding elegant solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

As co-owner, she sets the vision for the practice along with her partners, directs project management and business development, creates and maintains a creative work environment with integrity, humor, and intelligence.<\/p>\n

\"Connecting
Celadon at Ninth and Broadway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Leigh is project principal on a wide array of projects from corporate campuses, to parks and schools to botanical gardens. \u201cI am a loop-closer and direct-communicator by nature, good at synthesizing information. My eclectic background and pretty broad frame of reference keep me flexible and ready for surprises,\u201d says Leigh.<\/p>\n

Some of Leigh\u2019s favorite projects include the San Diego Federal Courthouse on Broadway \u2014 particularly the loose seating under the sycamores which is heavenly on a warm afternoon; Celadon \u2014 an affordable-housing tower on Ninth and Broadway with a very robust suite of on-structure terraces including a community garden on the fifth floor \u2014 a great combination of visionary client and creative collaboration between architect and landscape architect.<\/p>\n

Her greatest satisfaction comes from working directly with the \u201camazing team of creative people in our office who are extremely interested in rolling up their sleeves and getting to the problem-solving.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her spare time, she likes to travel, read, cook, eat and garden, take walks, and poke around looking at things. She can’t leave home without Chapstick and sunglasses<\/p>\n

A self-described baby boomer, Leigh lives in Clairemont with husband James McCarthy, a marine molecular biologist.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Delle Willett ha sido una profesional de marketing y relaciones p\u00fablicas durante m\u00e1s de 30 a\u00f1os, con \u00e9nfasis en la conservaci\u00f3n del medio ambiente. Ella puede ser contactada en dellewillett@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Delle Willett | Art on the Land Leigh Kyle grew up drawing and playing outdoors in the Hudson River Valley, an area with very interesting topography and geology and the birthplace of the Hudson River School of painting. Perhaps this is where she became interested in creating memorable places.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":240164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Connecting people to places","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11547,11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-features","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}