Landscape Design Build

Exterior Worlds is a residential landscape design build consulting firm specializing in landscape architecture, design, and custom landscape maintenance. We prefer to operate under the design build model of construction for a number of reasons. It offers us more direct control over the promised outcome of the project, and thus guarantees that clients will be satisfied with the results they have invested in. It also streamlines process in a way that expedites project completion and thus keeps labor costs—and the ultimate cost of the landscaping design—within the anticipated budget of the homeowner.

Design build construction is the oldest model of construction service in the world. It is based upon the principle that the architect, or Master Builder as he was called in many cultures, was the supreme authority to oversee the building of monumental structures. Palaces, temples, and public forums were constructed by such men for millennia. A modified version of this model is still used today. Basically, it means that a general contractor develops the design for the landscape or home, then brings in subcontractors to build out the specific elements of that design under the strict supervision of the general contract management team.

In the commercial world, many companies use the design-bid-build model, where the designer sells the concept to the company, which then bids it out to a general contractor and respective subcontractors who develop it. This is too complicated and expensive for even wealthy homeowners, and it often leads to errors in the final project. If a landscape design is bid to a landscaping firm who did not develop that design, they will most likely interpret it differently than from what it was originally intended, and in all likelihood, cost the homeowner much more money with problematic or a disappointing outcome at the end of the project.

It is for this reasons that most landscape companies like Exterior Worlds prefer to serve the custom home residential marketplace from a design build perspective. We begin by consulting extensively with the client and getting to know as much about their lifestyle, aesthetic sensibilities, and predetermined expectations for their home and yard. We then develop a landscape design that includes every element of form and function necessary to creating an outdoor living experience that respects the architecture of the home and compliments the lifestyle lived within the home itself. Once this model is complete (and we use graphic design software to create it), we then either build each element of the landscape ourselves, or we subcontract a specialist firm who will build specific outdoor structures and forms strictly according to the design plan we have already finalized with the homeowners.

The accountability this creates is incredible. Subcontractors brought in on the project are handed specifications and a list of materials in advanced that ensures they remain within the parameters of the intended build. Pool contractors, hardscape experts, and lighting design firms all work under the umbrella of our project management to seamlessly produce a finished project that embodies the conceptual in a form that typically exceeds the expectation of the client at the end of the day.

By acting as a landscape design build firm, Exterior Worlds is able to act as a single source of delivery of consultation, planning, design, and implementation. With a vision in mind combined with a plan on paper, we can forego the complexities and multiple layers of detail needed to produce the detailed schematics used by design-bid-build firms, and we can finish the project sooner as a managing, hands-on, single source design-build solution provider acting for the benefit of all parties concerned.