Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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136 nshoremag.com October 2014 bring big boulders into the deck to break up its lines and/or extend the deck so far out that it penetrates curvaceous bed borders. "It's a nice way to bring nature into that built space," he notes. From residential interiors to corporate office to restaurants and private function rooms, ZEN Associates is accustomed to designing all manner of indoor and outdoor spaces. With projects up and Landscape ne down the eastern seaboard, west to the Rockies, and overseas, its 65 employees comprise a sizeable construction crew, plus landscape architecture, interior design, project management, and hor- ticulture maintenance departments. In addition, a nine-member construction team works out of a small Washington, D.C. branch. In Woburn, all departments regularly convene to create the ZEN As- sociates aesthetic. One side of the offi is given over to the interior designers and landscape architects, the other half houses the construction crew, and smack in the middle sits the primary conference room. "Nearly every day, and absolutely on every project, the construction and design [departments] come together and talk about projects so we can build things that are creative, on time, within budget, and really well built," explains White. This is one of many things that distin- guish ZEN Associates from other land- scape architecture firm . "We build the projects we design because we find it to be a better process than separating designer and builder," notes White. "The idea and the responsibility should walk hand in hand. When delivering a project to a client, we want to be responsible for everything." Nearly 70 percent of their work is residential and chiefly focused on large to medium-sized projects in which clients are putting an addition onto the house, renovating a site, or investing in a new build. Though their commercial work makes up just 30 percent of the business, it includes large-scale commissions like a Japanese-inspired courtyard garden for Good Sense White and his colleagues are sensitive to both clients' and the environment's needs. photographs by michael basu