Welcome to JWPlacemakers.com

Connecting People, Place, and Nature

Services

Our services include Landscape Planning/Design, Planning,

and now community engagement

Community engagement through story telling

Interviewing people who are dealing with the major issues in Charleston - flooding, affordability, and livability

Landscape Planning and Design

I can provide a full range of services from custom designs to planning to construction administration for residential, multi-family, institutional, and commenrcial work.

Community Planning

Let me help you find a voice in the City of Charleston through contacts with many City departments and neighborhoods.

Multi-family

2000-Present

Multi-family housing is becoming more important in our area as more folks want to live here and seek amenities to suit their lifestyle. It also requires some interpretation of each place to create a livable, walkable, and authentic experience. Knowledge of the landscape and context is of utmost importance. Also, branding and signage bring attention and identity to each place and help to create distinctive, desirable places.

Residential Design

2004-Present

Residential design requires a specific kind of understanding of clients and their needs. It is as deeply personal as it is fundamental to our relationship with place. I work with clients to find the right details to work for their circumstances and enhance each landscape with sustainable elements that can be lower maintenance, higher ecological functioning, and a part of today's garden aesthetic. This is a two-way conversation that can be extraordinarily rewarding.

Institutional Design

1983-present

It has been a great joy in my life here in Charleston to be a part of the ongoing design and life of this wonderful campus. Beginning in the 1980s working with Ed Pinckney Associates creating the campus from city streets and urban housing, I have worked on many phases of development as designer, project manager, events management, and now as a professor in the Historic Prreservation and Community Planning program. The place continues to adapt and thrive as we face new challenges together and grow opportunitues for our students.

James Ward

Behind the Scenes

James Ward came to his adopted City, Charleston, during the first Spoleto Arts Festival in 1977 from the University of Georgia. He has been based here ever since with three years spent as the Government Landscape Architect for Bermuda. First as a teacher and carpenter, then as landscape architect and project manager, always as a community leader, now as professor at the College of Charleston, JW is about people and place and how they fashion “culture” together. Now, the idea of “Our Place in Nature” is a fundamental notion as he seeks to restart his environmental consultancy with a socially conscious point-of-view. Art in its many forms promises a way to bridge gaps and build understanding as we face new challenges in coming to grips with changes in our landscape. We seek inspiration and support from each other as we work to a sustainable future.

Examples of Services

From planning studies to onsite consultation on all site matters to landscape surveying & preliminary design to full working drawings, bidding, and construction administration, I can adapt my scope of services to fit your requirements.

Onsite consultation, landscape survey, and Preliminary Design

Landscape Survey & Master Planning

Developing concepts based on detail survey of the landscape elements and the client's program for comprehensive planning.

Planning in Historic Urban Areas

Community Planning

Involved in many projects from the Charlestson Aquarium, Charleston Place, the College of Charleston, the Charleston Visitors' Center as well as various streetscape projects, from consensus building to preliminary design to working drawings to construction administration.

Master Planning

Smart streets and mixed use

I have master planning a number of mixed-use developments based on plannedm unit developments as well as zoning studies to develop the right mix of uses and imaginative placemaking for livable commumities.

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