Design Meets Labor: Building Relationships of Respect Around Craft
We care immensely about the craft and endurance of the landscape architecture we design. As a practice that works from an expanded definition of “site,” one that includes its history, ecology, and form, we are also moving toward an expanded definition of our craft that is intimately linked to craftspeople. We acknowledge that, historically, the hands of those who build and maintain our work have been largely invisible. Despite our deep respect for our construction partners, we have not often enough credited, represented, or addressed the needs of the people laboring in our landscapes—and this is something we are committed to changing.
In her widely read article in the Journal of Landscape Architecture “Invisible Labor: Precarity, Ethnic Division, and Transformative Representation in Landscape Architecture Work”, Michelle Franco describes a mismatch between the proclaimed social aims of landscape architecture and the labor realities of construction and maintenance. She notes that the construction industry relies on manual laborers whose work situation is often characterized by precarity. Manual laborers operate at a social and spatial distance from the professionals who design, or “intellectually craft” the landscape, and are typically neither consulted in the process of design nor credited for their contributions (Franco, M. 2022). Terremoto Landscape, who is known for their advocacy around inclusive labor practices, calls for “a fundamental reimagining of how professional practice is structured” and asks landscape architects to both consider the needs of laborers and acknowledge the skills and wisdom that laborers bring (Terremoto. 2021).
Since 2020, our internal equity-in-action group has examined our office culture, design scope, and daily design process to identify places where we can have a positive equity impact. To date, we have used an equity lens to interrogate typical landscape design elements, post-occupancy at one of our local projects, and internal performance documents. Last year we embarked on a collaboration with Franco specifically examining contractor and laborer relationships by rethinking contracts, documentation, and communication flows. The 2025 Jardineros exhibition at the OSU Knowlton School, featuring work from RH and Terremoto, marks an important milestone in this ongoing effort. This work started with a simple step: getting to know the laborers better.
Much of what we have learned from contractors and their teams over the past months may not be new to anyone with a close eye on the construction field, but it is nonetheless important to understand and to make visible to our peers. Many landscape contractors rely on the H2B visa federal guest-worker program for their labor force. This visa has been crucial in supplying a labor force for the construction industry, but the unpredictability of the visa lottery system creates challenges for both employees and employers. Should the guest workers not be selected in the lottery, employers risk losing knowledgeable workers or scrambling to find any workforce at all. Meanwhile, even when selected, employees may face instability and limited leverage, knowing that speaking out might result in not being invited back. While the H2B visa affords certain protections to federal guest workers, including a minimum wage, the experience of guest workers is very much dependent on the employers’ willingness to provide support in a new challenging environment, fair working conditions, and the opportunity for growth and advancement. Employees may spend up to nine months in an unfamiliar environment where they do not have access to their usual support systems and even simple tasks like grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning are challenging. While these issues go beyond our disciplinary scope, we are exploring ways to mitigate some of these challenges, including social connection to help reduce isolation and active knowledge-sharing to help increase expertise.
Social connection is affected by project scale. While trust can be built over time, the difficulty of doing so grows in proportion with project scale and complexity. Smaller projects often offer more opportunities for fluid dynamics. We found a window into this through one of our residential projects in the northeast, where, after seven months working together, we had established a rapport with the landscape crew. With support from the construction manager, we were able to take a simple but fundamental step in forming a connection—sharing a meal. What we learned in this space was much more personal. We learned the name of their hometown in Guatemala, that some had never left their home country before, and that Kʼicheʼ is their first language while Spanish is their second or third language. We also discovered that their hometown has a strong tradition of stonework, owing to the abundance of stone deposited by a nearby, now-dormant volcano. This project created the opportunity for the laborers to apply their existing masonry knowledge but also to learn new skills to bring back home.
We also asked them about their favorite part of the project. Meaningfully, they were most excited and satisfied about the project components that were the most challenging, required the most skill and conceptualization, and the most intensive physical labor. Fieldstone is typically a difficult material to use for terrace paving, and our drawings conveyed the design intent for minimal but naturalistic joints. We selected a local granitic fieldstone for its rustic character and similarity to existing boulders on site, but it proved more variable than typically expected. For the laborers, the act of puzzling together heavy slabs of fieldstone into an organic pattern required considerable technical execution and artistic interpretation. This became an opportunity to prove their craftmanship and grow their skills.
This experience led to an important realization: labor-intensive work is not inherently problematic. When the design is open to interpretation by the hand of the laborer, it is also a venue for them to exercise their agency and bring their own perspective to the project. Construction work is undeniably difficult, and designers do well when we empathize with crews and advocate for protection. But we learned that we need not discard an idea simply because it will be physically demanding to execute. Instead, we must not forget our appreciation of natural materials and irregularity and continue to take the risk of open-ended design that lets go of control. When the result is beautiful, both the design and construction teams can share in the pride of the achievement.
On the other hand, laborers face demoralizing interactions when their skills are underestimated or designers require that work be taken down or re-done, which often stems from issues in communication. The flow of communication during construction is based on long-established protocols targeted at managing risk. These protocols aim to funnel information through specific channels, minimizing direct communication between designers and laborers to clarify responsibility and, thus, liability. The usual communication flow moves from the designer to the project manager or foreman, then to the crew, and back via the same path.
In the US, much of the labor force comes from Central and South America, so designer-foreman communication often takes place in English, before being translated for Spanish-speaking laborers, either through translation tools, miming, or an intermediary bilingual foreman. We also rely on construction documentation drawings and specifications as our primary tools, but laborers often do not see the drawings, and many would struggle to understand them because of the language and training barrier.
This gap in communication means that laborers often have not been introduced to the work in a way that allows them to fully understand the design intent, raise questions as they work, or grow their knowledge about landscape design. While the foreman should continue to be a consistent presence, we can bring more people to the table and make use of the full range of our communication tools, while still staying within the protocols for managing risk. Just as we rely on precedents, renderings, and models to convey design intent to clients, why not use the same or similar tools to help laborers visualize their tasks? Taking a moment to explain our intent directly to the crew before work is performed (for example, clarifying what ‘triangular planting spacing’ means, or setting expectations for how pavers should be cut along an edge to avoid undesired conditions) could avoid tiring and demoralizing re-work.
Based on what we have learned, we are piloting a set of easy-to-implement laborer engagement guidelines aimed at facilitating direct communication between Reed Hilderbrand designers and laborers during construction administration. The first step is to approach the contractor about the desire for increased engagement with the laborers. Once that initial connection is made, we propose gathering the full team at key stages of construction—such as before grading, paving, or planting begins—for a brief meeting. During these meetings, we can share drawings, models, and provide an opportunity for questions. These guidelines include step-by-step recommendations, sample language, and an abbreviated English-to-Spanish glossary.
While not all the crews we work with are composed of recent, Spanish-speaking immigrants, these principles are universal. The goal is to bridge communication gaps between designers and laborers, build respect and agency for those who perform hands-on work, and cultivate a more compassionate, holistic culture of craft. We at RH believe that it is critical to recognize the depth of craft involved in building and maintaining landscapes —whether it is paving, wall construction, or grading—and to ask laborers what they excel at, so their expertise can inform and enrich the design process.
The craft of landscape architecture is a collaborative endeavor that extends beyond the intellectual work of designers to the hands-on expertise of laborers. By fostering direct communication between designers and laborers, we can elevate the craft as a shared, dynamic process that honors the contributions of all involved. This shift requires us to reimagine our professional practice, starting with making space for more meaningful interactions, acknowledging the full range of skills, and ultimately building landscapes that reflect both intellectual and physical craftsmanship.
Bibliography
Franco, Michelle A. “Invisible Labor: Precarity, Ethnic Division, and Transformative Representation in Landscape Architecture Work.” Landscape Journal. 41 (1), 95-111. (2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/lj.41.1.95
USAFacts Team. “Which industries employ the most immigrant workers?” USAFacts https://usafacts.org/articles/which-industries-employ-the-most-immigrant-workers/ (2025, January 29) Retreived on March 26, 2025.
Terremoto. “Landscape Architecture Has a Labor Acknowledgement Problem. Metropolis”. https://metropolismag.com/viewpoints/landscape-architecture-labor-terremoto/ (April 14, 2021)
Credits:
Featured project work is constructed by Sea-dar Construction and Piscataqua Landscaping