Employee Spotlight: Isabella D'Alessandro
What is your favorite part of working in landscape architecture?
I find deep joy in designing spaces for people to feel important in. A space where they can feel heard, valued, prioritized and unique. With this profession, I get the honor of translating wants and desires into physical spaces — beautifully welding together a dream into a realized reality.
How incredible is that?!?
What motivates you?
Beautiful spaces
Making a difference
Time: we often don’t get opportunities twice, so being really intentional with each moment helps motivate and guide me in the right direction.
Kindness
& a strong cup of coffee.
What inspired you to pursue a career in landscape architecture?
I’ve always been in love with my environment. I grew up in a small town, where the landscape was vast, dry and ever-changing. I admired the seasonal variations throughout the year while taking note of the sensory experiences that surrounded me. I looooved listening to the sound of grass rustle in the wind.
My grandma was a very sweet woman who was a plant whisperer. Amongst many plants, she grew sunflowers and strawberries. She, too, was an admirer of the wind; the perimeter of her home was adorned in wind chimes. She equally paid attention to the interior spaces of her home. Each room had so much character: bold accent walls, books galore and a tasteful amount of houseplants peppered through the space.
I took cues from each of these experiences and began marching forth with two guiding principles: connecting people back to natural landscapes and creating personalized sacred spaces.
I knew I wanted to be a designer, but couldn’t quite place my finger on which specific design discipline captured what I was looking for. After trying out architecture, I remember meeting with my guidance counselor describing my dream major:
“I want to design everything around the buildings, what is that?”
She laughed and said, “that would be landscape architecture!”
What's something you're excited to be working on?
I’m so excited to be designing at the residential scale! It’s still new to me; I am enjoying the challenges associated with designing on steep sites, in addition to delivering concepts that start to shape the overall design vision. Such cool stuff!
What is something people don’t know about you?
I have a bad habit of accidentally wearing my clothes backwards and sometimes even a combo of inside-out AND backwards. I never realize until the end of the day, and no one ever tells me.