Welcome to 
Our Designs Landscape Architects
and visit 
donnarodmanstudio.com to view/purchase Donna Rodman's Fine Art Works


Research

Our Designs researches the history of a site, conducts site inventories, examines human factors - health and environmental - influences for site use, writes and presents on Landscape, Environmental and Therapeutic designs.
Our Designs also researches and writes reports for crime prevention through environment design (CPTED).

Site Planning

Our Design's process is to create site plans initially working closely with the client to understand the client's wishes and requirements.  Site planning is derived from surveys and interviews.  Site planning is through illustration,  schematic diagrams, manually sketched in 3D or prepared in 2D CAD.  Site planning is typically human-centered unless the work is environmental design or larger scale planning.

Landscape Architecture Design

Our designs are typically detailed and of high quality with problem-seeking and problem-solving worked through the entire design process.  

About Donna Rodman, MBCSLA, CSLA  

Donna Rodman, is the founding principal of Our Designs Inc. (Est. 1992, name changed in 2010 to Our Designs Landscape Architects & Associates Inc.) In 2020 mid-Covid, company converted to a sole proprietorship called Our Designs (Donna Marie Rodman o/a Our Designs Landscape Architects).    A Diploma in Nursing (The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C.), a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Geography (The University of British Columbia), a Certificate in Building (British Columbia Institute of Technology), and a Master in Landscape Architecture (The University of British Columbia), all contribute to her ability to provide design and consulting services for her clients. Thank you.

Donna has worked primarily in the private sector and has managed projects from both the consultant and applied design practitioner perspective. She has received awards for her professional participation within the life sciences scientific research community, her volunteer work with children, and the presentation of fresh and innovative design concepts centering mostly on people-plant and people-environment interfaces. Among the many interests and goals she has, she still places improving life for all people including people with disabilities as one of her key contributions. 

Our Designs' customers are owners with unique design needs, architects, landscape architects, private corporations, public institutions, and government agencies. Customers benefit from increased public access to their businesses, programmes, and environments; good public relations; and the creation of caring and thoughtfully conceived environments.

 Donna's fresh, out of box thinking has been noted by architects, landscape architects, and private clients. Clients consistently note that Donna designs sustainable, equitable and green habitats. Lately she has been designing at both the human centered scale to the planning scale, creating green habitat environments between diverse land uses. She has a passion for designing in the blue edge that is:  wetlands and streamside corridors, and presents or writes about her research for using aquatic species to improve water quality.  Donna also believes strongly in bringing history (heritage landscapes that are timeless) and the future (landscapes as catalysts of change) together in design.   She is respectful of the environmental knowing and cultural history of First Nations and Indigenous peoples.  The hallmark of her work is focused on people and nature respectfully interfaced and affecting each other.  Donna believes that nature has unique, healing properties and provides an ideal environment for learning about and teaching about our planet and our living habitat systems.  Beauty, natural living systems, human subsystems, restoring habitats, and supporting science are key words for Donna Rodman.

The majority of Donna's access experience has been gained by working with Architects who specialized in designing for people with disabilities. Acting as an universal design consultant, she has worked collaboratively with private clients and their Architects to restore garden environments within single and multifamily housing units that require accessible play spaces, private gardens, courtyards, and amenities for parents in wheelchairs who have children. She has worked diligently with Architects in facility programming for accessibility of public institutions and healthcare facilities; and she has participated in advisory and committee groups to set down guidelines for accessible housing criteria for builders and developers.

Letters of reference can be provided upon request.

Most Relevant Projects


G.R.E.A.T. Space Shoe Box Adventure

Great Space Design Project - G.R.E.A.T.: Working with the children, teachers, and school administrators for the design and construction of a play space through drawings and 3D models. Coordinating learning experience for ocean and forest ecologies, school edible project, and Echoes, by Michel Goulet, Canada. Bringing together 4 elements of air, fire, earth and water within a BC native plant and green heart that will flow to a larger outer play area. Key words: natural, outdoor learning and engagement.
Norgate Community Elementary School population represents the ethnic diversity of Vancouver’s Lower Mainland. 65% of the student population is First Nations. Norgate strives to be an institutional support within the community with complete academic, before school, after school and early childhood programming. What would fully support the whole community that includes Norgate, is an interactive space, integral to the school’s learning and greater community engagement environment. 
It was identified that the underused, inner courtyard, literally in the centre of the school, could embody the community essence of the school while creating a physical space of collaboration, reflection, imaginative play and nature-based learning. This project’s aim is to move the design process further so that the courtyard is developed as “A Gathering. Reconciliation. Ecological. Agora. Theatre. Space.”

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MOTTO: A Gathering. Reconciliation. Ecological. Agora. Theatre. Space
2014
  

Church Staircase

Replacement of a wooden staircase with a concrete, universally designed stair system.  Unique features of running conduits for watering gardens and future lighting.  Handrails designed to replicate the early architect's vision of window detailing (1966)  Project completed 2014.
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Wetland Reconstruction and Restoration

For the wetland project, Our Designs Inc. is working with Vector Engineering to design 3 ponds with various depths and aquatic shelves. The principal has analyzed plant material and root systems, planting heights, water velocities and brings together various sciences and plant responses into the design. Our Designs prepared landscape plans, sections, details, quantity take off calculations and is working closely with the Biologists and Arborists from Pottinger Gaherty and the Civil Engineers with Vector Engineering Services. The design of the wetland involved taking an invasive species inventory and preparing a mapping of the ESA, dividing it into 12 habitat zones. The plant list includes aquatics and the selection of B.C. Native shrubs, conifers and deciduous trees. The plants where selected to provide shade as quickly as possible to further irradicate the shade intolerant Himalayan Blackberry on the site.

The Commercial site next to the wetland was also dressed with B.C. Native shrubs and trees.    The water courses on 3 sides of the project provide fish and wildlife habitats.


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$4 Million Construction Budget
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