Monika: Today it is my pleasure and honor to interview Vicki Estrada, a landscape architect, urban planner, civic visionary, the President of Estrada Land Planning, a landscape architecture firm from San Diego. Hello Vicki!
Vicki: Hello Monika. I am quite honored that I am one you chose to interview. By the way, thank you for all you do for our community throughout the world.
Monika: Could you say a few words about your professional career so far?
Vicki: Well, I have owned my own design firm now for 29 years, almost half of my 61 years. I currently have 8 employees. Growing up I wanted to be an architect but realized while in architecture school that what makes a city great is not an iconic building here or tower there. It is what happens between buildings, how the buildings are arranged, that makes cities great. This is what landscape architects do.
There is misunderstanding by most that because the word "landscape architect" has the work "landscape" in it, that we are "fancy" gardeners. It is much more far reaching than that. I heard a story once by a famous landscape architect that if you imagine the earth as a canvas, architects put dots on the map, engineers connect the dots but landscape architects are the only ones that can literally paint the entire canvas.
I never forgot that story and have never regretted my decision to change from being an architect to being a landscape architect. We seem to be much more open and able to think on a larger scale.
Vicki: Well, I have owned my own design firm now for 29 years, almost half of my 61 years. I currently have 8 employees. Growing up I wanted to be an architect but realized while in architecture school that what makes a city great is not an iconic building here or tower there. It is what happens between buildings, how the buildings are arranged, that makes cities great. This is what landscape architects do.
There is misunderstanding by most that because the word "landscape architect" has the work "landscape" in it, that we are "fancy" gardeners. It is much more far reaching than that. I heard a story once by a famous landscape architect that if you imagine the earth as a canvas, architects put dots on the map, engineers connect the dots but landscape architects are the only ones that can literally paint the entire canvas.
I never forgot that story and have never regretted my decision to change from being an architect to being a landscape architect. We seem to be much more open and able to think on a larger scale.
