Michael Bunganich has joined PDS West as a Principal and Head of Landscape Architecture. Mike, who is a licensed Landscape Architect in California and Nevada and a licensed Architect in California, brings over 20 years experience in the Landscape Architectural field to PDS West. Click here for more information about Mike.
Under Mike’s direction, Landscape Architectural projects range from streetscapes and plazas to parks and athletic facilites. We work on commercial, industrial, residential, resort and multi-use projects. We provide exceptional design, sustainable landscape planning, construction documents and specifications, bid docurments and accurate cost estimating. For more information about our projects click here to visit our Web Site.
On April 29, 2009 the Riverside County Planning Commission gave a unanimous positive review of the Thermal Design Guidelines prepared for the County by PDS West. It will now go before the Board of Supervisors for adoption.
The purpose of these design guidelines is to capture and strengthen Thermal’s sense of place within the rapidly growing eastern Coachella Valley. Unlike the resort-oriented communities such as Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage to the northwest, Thermal grew from agricultural roots and the railroad. It represents the low-scale, expansive rural ambience of the eastern Coachella Valley. Its most distinctive design icons – packing houses, date palm groves, table and citrus croplands, and the single-engine plane of famed aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran, evoke an earlier time.
Celebrating its agricultural bounty, improving its streetscape landscaping, strengthening its community core and developing attractive public space are the major goals of these guidelines. This document crystallizes Thermal’s best qualities and creates an attractive, low-key design vocabulary, including industrial and packing house architecture. But these guidelines are also forward-thinking and adopt principles of environmental sustainability, energy conservation and green building design. With its abundant resources, growing population and employment needs, Thermal is looking to the future to become a catalyst in creating buildings, industry and opportunities in green building and alternative energy.
Click here for complete guidelines on the County Web Site
The Riverside County Planning Commission unanimously gave a positive review of these design guidelines prepared by PDS West for the County. They will now go before the Board of Supervisors for adoption.
This small farmworker community near the Salton Sea is 99+% Latino, most originating from rural Mexico. The guidelines capture the ambiance of a traditional Mexican small town in a beautiful desert and agricultural setting. They build on its existing identity displayed in small personalized homes with ornamental wrought-iron fences and gates and moulded arcades. In addition to guidence for streetscapes, entrance monuments and signage, architecture, parks, landscape design, walls and fences, the booklet provides a conceptual plan and guidelines for a town plaza.
Click here for more information
Click here for complete guidelines on the County Web Site
On February 4, 2009, the Riverside Planning Commission unanimously voted to approve the planned community of Las Praderas. The development is being coordinated by Legend Homes in Murrieta, California. PDS West provided land planning services, designing the community layout and preparing the design guidelines, environmental graphics design, presentation graphics and a power point presentation. Located within the Winchester Hills Specific Plan, Las Praderas is one of the first approved small-lot subdivisions in the County. It has a total of 420 alley-loaded and front-loaded homes.
Las Praderas will be an attractive, single-family community of two neighborhoods, each oriented around two acre, centrally-located parks. Consistent with the rustic design themes set forth in the Winchester Hills Specific Plan, the architectural character of Las Praderas will reflect the rural, vernacular styles of the region including Early California, Bungalow, Country Cottage and Spanish. Lot sizes, ranging from 3600 to just over 4000 square feet, and alley and front-loaded designs will give the community an intimate and varied feel. A central roundabout and right-angle street orientation will give Las Praderas a somewhat formal, New Urbanist layout.
In addition to Legend Homes and PDS West, the project team includes ACD Engineering, Iverson Architects and David Neault Associates, Landscape Architects.
