Scott Whitham Landscape Architecture PLLC

Scott Whitham Landscape Architecture PLLC and Whitham Planning & Design (WPD) is a landscape architecture, planning, and project management firm located in Ithaca, New York. Established in 2010, the firm provides a broad range of services, including landscape architecture, project and approvals planning, and design team coordination. As part of this work, WPD acts as project design consultant or project landscape architect, and coordinates review and permitting aspects of site and building development projects. WPD has developed strong relationships with professionals in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, engineering, media outreach, and graphic design, and coordinates collaborative efforts designed to meet specific project requirements. 

Landscape Architecture and Planning: To create truly sustainable systems, projects must be designed with time, people, and place in mind. As landscape architects, WPD recognize the inherent values, ecological function, and aesthetic beauty found in both elemental systems and designed space. We take a pragmatic and creative approach to fusing natural and built environments, finding effective design solutions to solve creative problems through iterative processes of site analysis and design.

WPD considers projects as a whole in terms of their natural and social ecologies. As designers, we maintain that less usually does mean more. By focusing on a strong overall message, our firm believes in design as an organizing principle. This translates into site design with a unifying visual theme, as well as prioritizing elements of a project that are singular and memorable. Our emphasis on function ranges from small-scale site plans that fit into both their ecological niche and their architectural context, to accommodating and understanding the diversity and vitality of the community of which they are a part. 

Project Coordination: WPD has deep experience in managing schedules for multi-year, complex projects, which require working closely with developers, colleague designers, and the respective municipality in which the project is sited.  Long-range projects often require the involvement of many other consultants, participation in a variety of public forums, effective management of tasks, and public transparency in the analysis and design processes. The firm has extensive experience in defining the scope and sequence of approvals and permits required per municipal and state codes and has been deeply involved in the oversight, coordination, and production of discrete review documents such as State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) documentation, Environmental Impact Statements, and the submission of site plan approval proposals, zoning review, and associated permits.