Landscape Architecture Portfolio 2023

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

SELECTED WORK BY KAITLYN E. VREEKEN

PORTFOLIO I KAITLYN VREEKEN

email: vreeken@umich.eduphone: (313) 268 - 5118linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/kaitlynvreeken313

I am an extroverted plant enthusiast from the Detroit area with a strong passion for designing memorable & restorative urban landscapes at all scales. My time working towards a Master of Landscape Architecture in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan shaped my evidence-based approach to design which balances ecology & multifunctionality with beauty & cultural significance.

Growing up interacting with the Great Lakes & Detroit River on a daily basis coupled with my formative work experiences in hospitality, horticulture, & criminal justice have greatly influenced me, my passions, & my ultimate guiding principal of designing socially & environmentally responsible landscapes. I specialize in 3D modeling & perspective rendering & have a special interest for flood mitigation, stormwater management, & shoreline restoration work.

Thank you,

ASSION FOR PLANTS VERSEGRAPHIC SKILLS ALEADER ON TEAMS

EDUCATION

Master of Landscape Architecture | 2023

University of Michigan | School of Environment and Sustainability

Bachelor of Arts and Sciences I 2018

Indiana University | Double Major: Criminal Justice and Spanish

Advanced Liberal Arts Study Abroad Program I 2017

Universidad de Barcelona I Spanish Linguistic Studies

RELEVANT VOLUNTEER WORK

Piet Oudolf Belle Isle Garden - Official Volunteer

Detroit MI I 2020 - 2021

Greening of Detroit - Citizen Forester

Detroit MI I 2020

Natural Area Preserve - Prescribed Burner & Volunteer

Ann Arbor MI I 2022

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE PROFICIENCIES

Landscape Architecture Intern

TBG Partners I Houston, TX

May 2022 - August 2022

Small Business Owner

Prickle LLC I Detroit, MI

June 2018 - Present

Vice President - Student Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects

University of Michigan I Ann Arbor, MI

April 2022 - Present

Track Leader - Student Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects

University of Michigan I Ann Arbor, MI

September 2020 - April 2021

Perennial Department Retailer & Butterfly House Assistant

Ray Wiegand’s Nursery I Utica, MI

May 2021 - August 2021

Senior Hospitality Agent

Sonder Inc. I Detroit, MI

March 2020 - January 2021

Hospitality Agent

Sonder Inc. I Detroit, MI

September 2019 - March 2020

General Contractor

MISA Renovations I Detroit, MI

June 2018 - January 2019

Adobe Creative Cloud Suite

ArcGIS Pro

ASANA

AutoCAD

Bluebeam Revu

Dropbox

Google Suite

Google Teams

IMovie

Microsoft Office

Miro

Rhino

Sketchup

Zotero

After Effects

Bridge

Illustrator

InDesign

Photoshop

Premiere Pro

Excel

Outlook

PowerPoint

Word

Please visit my resume for additional information on my work experiences

References available upon request

SELECTED WORK

LET IT FLOOD: BLUE SOLUTIONS TO FLOOD MITIGATION IN JEFFERSON CHALMERS

LOCATION

ADVISOR

PROJECT TYPE

AREA 0.2%

Jefferson Chalmers - Detroit MI

Lisa DuRussel

Urban Resiliency + Flood Mitigation

YEAR Fall 2022 - In Progress

Before Jefferson Chalmers came to be, it was a vast marshland called the Grand Marais. The historic marshland’s bowl-like topography set the stage for today’s life threatening conditions redefining the resident’s connection to the historic canals, the riverfront & Detroit River.

High lake water levels in combination with increased precipitation rates, more frequent & intense extreme weather events, & wave run up are all amplified by the neighborhood’s inadequate seawalls, inconsistent housing conditions, & insufficient combined sewer system.

Flooding here is a multi-scalar social & environmental injustice issue that requires a system of interventions to improve the neighborhood’s resiliency in the face of climate change.

MAXIMIZING IMPACT TOPOGRAPHY

GRAPHICS Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, ArcGIS Pro, AutoCAD, SketchUp

JEFFERSON CHALMERS

FOX CREEK

ROADS

IMPACT

connection between residents’ canals or topographic location economic status, the condition of infrastructure, & the overall density were all key considerations when areas to return back to nature &/or

SCALES OF INTERVENTIONS

- Reduce pressure on combined sewer system

- Convey floodwaters away from high density residential zones

- Retrofit underutilized space into multifunctional flood mitigation greenspaces

CONVEYANCE CHANNEL

PROPOSED DRAINAGE FLOW

Let it Flood: Blue Solutions To Flood Mitigation in Jefferson Chalmers

URBAN RIVER

RETENTION CANAL

The location of the retention canal along Essex Avenue, Lenox Street, Averhill Court, & Newport Street was selected primarily due to its low elevation & history of flooding. Playing into the existing drainage flow will reduce the amount of infrastructure needed to convey runoff into the canal.

1.4 Miles of flood mitigation

Total gallons stored: 105,604.8 40-Gal bath tubs

Walking Trail

Year-Round Visual Interest + Pollinator Friendly Plant Palette

Raised

Outlet Drain

Pedestrian & Vehicle Bridge

Retention Canal

Wetland Plant Bu er

STORMWATER PARKS

There are several scales of stormwater park interventions proposed in this design prioritizing pedestrian circulation & stormwater storage & filtration. The largest being the construction of Fox Creek Park & the restoration of the existing shoreline parks. The size of inland stormwater parks range from 1-2 converted adjacent vacant properties to entire blocks. The dashed outlines indicate the number of basements that will be reused as the park’s detention basins.

DENSELY PLANTED TREE BUFFER FOR INCREASED INFILTRATION

INLAND TRAIL SYSTEM & WATERFRONT BOARDWALK

STRATEGIC BERM PLACEMENT & WETLAND BUFFER

DESIGNATED FISHING AREAS

BOAT & KAYAK LAUNCHES

CANAL OVERLOOKS

WATER SPORTS EQUIPMENT STORAGE

Let it Flood: Blue Solutions To Flood Mitigation in Jefferson Chalmers 9

Bees & Golf: An Unlikely yet Impactful Partnership

Oceanside, CA

CLIENT Greener Golf

Capstone - Design & Build

Winter 2022 - Present

TEAM Caitlin Bates MLA, Cade Schafer SUS SYS, & Remington Gerst BEC

With our project’s ultimate goal of providing the golfing community with supporting data, tools, & guidelines to promote, protect, & propagate pollinator-related efforts on golf courses, we partnered with Goat Hill Park to conduct a case study.

By using USGA’s DEACON tracker gadgets to record golfer movements on the course, we were able to convert an 18,000 sq ft out-of-play area on Hole 12 into a pollinator conservation garden. The implications of this research & our pilot site has the potential to not only benefit pollinators but encourage the golfing industry to include more sustainable, pollinator-friendly efforts in their management practices.

My role as project manager & landscape designer was to generate a series of maps from data recorded in our field experiments determining the site’s most impactful location, to work directly with our client to develop the garden’s design & plant palette, & finally, to make all client facing graphics & construction documents.

Background Photo Credit: Rusty Spencer

GRAPHICS Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Hand Drawing

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT SITE PREPARATION GARDEN INSTALLATION

PLANTING STRUCTURE

Century Plant I Agave americana

Heavy Metal Blue Switchgrass I Panicum virgatum ‘Heavy Metal’

Canyon Prince Wild Rye I Leymus condensatus

Blue Gama I Bouteloua gracilis

Desert Globemallow I Sphaeralcea ambigua

Foxtail Agave I Agave attenuata

‘Superb’ Grevillea I Grevillea Superb

‘Salmon’ Autumn Sage I Salvia greggii ‘Salmon’

‘Meerlo’ Lavender I Lavandula x allardii ‘Meerlo’

Firecracker Penstemon I Penstemon eatonii

Showy Penstemon I Penstemon spectabilis

Sticky Monkeyflower I Mimulus aurantiacus

Common Yarrow I Achillea millefolium

‘Fiesta Marigold’ Monkeyflower I Mimulus aurantiacus ‘Fiest Marigold’

‘Hidcote’ Lavender I Lavandula angustifolia

Moonshine Yarrow I Achillea ‘Moonshine’

Purple Owl’s Clover I Castilleja exserta

‘Salmon Beauty’ Yarrow I Achillea millefolium ‘Salmon Beauty’

‘Afterglow’ Echeveria I Echeveria ‘Afterglow’

Beavertail pricklypear I Optunia basilarius

Chalk Dudleya I Dudleya pulverulenta

Little Sur Manzanita I Arctostaphylos edmundsii

CYPRESS GROVE

Fifth Ward Neighborhood - Houston, TX

CLIENT

PROJECT TYPE

YEAR

TEAM

Habitat for Humanity

Internship Design Challenge (TBG Partners)

Summer 2022

Jayce Carothers, John Kalamaja, Claire Mei, & Caleb Payne

Habitat for Humanity had just two criteria for the reconstruction of an abandoned water plant property in the historic Fifth Ward neighborhood: include as many housing units as physically possible & address the neighborhood’s flooding issue. With two teams competing against each other & just four days to visit the site, develop a comprehensive design package, & present our concept to our clients, the skills & knowledge gained were invaluable.

Cypress Grove reclaims valuable underutilized urban space while simultaneously addressing prevalent social issues including a lack of affordable housing, inadequate stormwater management, & food insecurity in Houston’s Fifth Ward neighborhood. My role on the winning team was to assist in the design’s development, conduct site analysis, research history & context, generate the hand drawn master plan, & present the final design packet to our client & in a firm-wide presentation.

GRAPHICS

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Hand Drawing, SketchUp

CONSTRAINTS & OPPORTUNITIES

Samuel T. Dana Entry Garden

A Strategic Introduction to Naturalistic Planting Design

LOCATION

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor MI

Lisa DuRussel ADVISOR

PROJECT TYPE

Campus Planting Design

YEAR Fall 2021

The Samuel T. Dana garden, a staple to the School of Environment & Sustainability, has been used for many years as a refuge for students & staff to walk through during their busy days. The existing design, a native garden left unmaintained for years, has become an eye sore to the building & does little in promoting the use of native plants & naturalistic planting design. Barren in the winter & overgrown in the summer, the garden & its lack of social programming begs for a redesign. SUN STUDY

EXISTINGSUMMER

GRADE MANIPULATION

Sandy soil & existing drainage infrastructure allowed for unique manipulations of grade. Small channels direct minimal drainage flow while mounding beds diversify visual experience, add complexity to the site, & emphasize planting.

GRAPHICS Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, AutoCAD, Hand Drawing, SketchUp

SOCIAL PROGRAMMING

Hidden behind the tall vegetation & mounded planting beds are diverse, semiprivate seating areas designed for students & staff to work, eat, chat, or simply spend time outdoors during the busy work week.

ECOLOGICAL PRODUCTIVITY

The diverse array of plants were intentionally selected to increase biodiversity, for their ability to provide shelter & forage for wildlife & pollinators, & for their low maintenance requirements that reduce the need for labor & minimize natural resource consumption.

Samuel T. Dana Garden

Organized Chaos: A strategic plant palette for introducing naturalistic planting design & year-round visual interest

SUMMERCONDITION

Baptisia australis I Blue False Indigo

Liatris spicata I Blazing Star

Echinacea purpurea I Purple Coneflower

Matteuccia struthiopteris I Ostrich Fern

Miscanthus sinensis I Gracilimus Maiden Grass

Sorbaria sorbifolia ‘Sem’ I Sem False Spirea

Rhus typhina I Bailtiger Tiger Eyes

Magnolia x soulangeana I Saucer Magnolia

In contrast to the garden’s overgrown & haphazard current condition, ‘organized chaos’ refers to a planting structure & palette that mimics naturalistic garden design but one that incorporates intentionality & legibility in order to gradually introduce people to this new type of garden.

Chasmanthium

Rhus

Sporobolus

Allium stellatum I Prairie Onion

Athyrium filixl femina I Lady in Red Fern

Sporobolus heterolepis I Prairie Dropseed

Chasmanthium latifolium I Northern Sea Oats

aromatic ‘Grow Low’ I Grow Low Sumac

Ilex verticillata I Winterberry

Lindera benzionI Spicebush

Acer saccharum I Sugar Maple

WINTERCONDITION

For the visitors, students, & staff who come to the Dana Building five days a week year-round, the desire & need for an aesthetically pleasing & visually complex garden does not simply cease during the winter. Therefore, a guiding principal for the plant palette was to not only be conscious of the winter form of each plant but to celebrate & highlight it.

REFLECTION PARK

Creative Ecologies: Rethinking McDougall-Hunt’s Vacant Spaces

LOCATION

McDougall-Hunt Neighborhood - Detroit MI

Lisa DuRussel ADVISOR

PROJECT TYPE

Urban Park Design

YEAR Winter 2021

McDougall-Hunt, a historic neighborhood adjacent to Detroit’s Black Bottom & now home to the famous Heidelberg Project, seeks to stabilize their existing housing crisis & lack of greenspace access. The lifelong residents are highly engaged in improving the community’s livability; having identified providing educational opportunities, preserving artistic character, & attracting young families as their ultimate goals for their Sustainable Redevelopment Plan.

Challenged with developing a single permorary design element to activate one of the 14,800+ vacant lots within McDougall-Hunt, Reflection Park, its flexible art installations, & shared gathering spaces maximizes the functionality of a small-scale vacant lot while simultaneously celebrating the neighborhood’s unique history & loyal residents.

INSPIRE

Community gathering space to socialize, display & installations, & share information bulletin boards.

CONNECT

Open seating encourages & social interaction, making experience.

ENJOY THE JOURNEY

An elongated experience and meadow planting. A transform with each site’s

SUSTAINABILITY

The native meadow garden forage & habitat for pollinators low maintenance plants in the catchment and filtration precipitation. The use of solar eliminate the need for electrical.

GRAPHICS Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Hand Drawing, Rhino, Ultimaker 3

space that allows residents appreciate temporary art information on community

encourages the blending of groups making each visit a different

through the art installations modifiable feature that will condition & context.

garden will provide ample pollinators & wildlife while the plants themselves will assist filtration of stormwater & solar powered bollards will electrical.

DESIGNING THE REFLECTIVE BOLLARDS

While walking through the winding elevated path, bordered with colorful low maintenance wildflowers & meadow grasses, visitor’s eyes are drawn to the mirrored bollards scattered tastefully throughout the wildflowers. The lights, powered by a solar panel on the top, reflect both the native plants as they grow in the neighborhoods historic soil & the long-term residents who have unwaveringly celebrated & protected the neighborhood’s character.

A PATH THAT WINDS...

Understanding that each vacant property comes in different shapes & sizes, & with different restrictions & connection points, it was clear this design could drastically change. Therefore, I wanted to focus on a fluid motion rather than a concrete shape. The winding path bends & straightens to stretch out the experience while enabling different intimate viewpoints & creating spaces that are equally private as they are public.

Esperanza Active Adult Recreation Center

These samples come from a construction document set I created during my summer internship for TBG Partners. My role was to clean up civil plans, create section cuts emphasizing grade change, create a series of details, label call outs in lighting & planting plans, create the material & lighting schedules, to research & develop a plant palette, design potted plant arrangements, & to organize the construction document sheets. More details & construction documents examples available upon request.

BOULDER

DECOMPOSED GRANITE AT CONC STEPPER

PERIMETER POOL GATE SECTION

2 PERIMETER POOL GATE

1 STONE VENEER WALL

Construction Detail Samples

SECTION SCALE: 3/4”=1’0”

SECTION SCALE: 1”=1’0”

3

SECTION SCALE: 1”=1’0”

6 LANDSCAPE

SECTION SCALE: 3/4”=1’0”

5

SECTION SCALE: 1”=1’0”

Prickle LLC

INSTAGRAM @pricklellc

I launched my small business from my parent’s living room just after graduating from my undergrad June, 2018. It wasn’t until every window in my parent’s home was covered with a different succulent &/or cacti arrangement that I realized I was going to have to start selling so I could, obviously, make room for more plants. Already interested in sustainability & green development, it was important for me to propagate inhouse, buy locally, & use recycled materials for all of my arrangements.

With Prickle’s immediate success at local art fairs & on Instagram, I began to venture into tropicals, variegation, & plant ecology. I spent my free time researching the plants I had & especially the plants I wanted. I began writing down the tricks & hacks I learned along the way & eventually compiled it all into a book that is now, Prickle LLC Presents: Faking a Green Thumb, a 100+ page Online document that I share with friends, family, and customers.

In many ways, Prickle LLC gave me the space to explore plants & design on a deeper level & played a pivotal role in leading me to landscape architecture.