development team:  land planners

Peter Calthorpe, architect and planner

Peter Calthorpe is an architect and planner who has combined 30 years of experience in both disciplines to create an environmental approach to community development and urban design.  The central focus of his practice is mixed-use master planning with a concern for creating communities that are environmentally sound, economically diverse, and socially progressive. For his work in redefining the models of urban and suburban growth in America, he was named one of 25 innovators "on the cutting edge" by Newsweek Magazine for his ideas and designs centering on New Urbanism.

He is considered the world’s preeminent New Urbanist planner. At Mesa del Sol, Calthorpe’s design will take full advantage of the sense of identity created by the site’s rich context of natural features. To the east, the Manzano and Sandia Mountains form a dramatic backdrop. The Jemez, Ladrone, Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and Petroglyph National Monument are visible in the distance, as is Mount Taylor, some 60 miles away. To the north is the vast Tijeras Arroyo.

Calthorpe’s vision outlined in the Mesa del Sol Master Plan incorporates design elements to maximize walking, bicycling and transit use, thus reducing the need to use private automobiles; conserving natural areas and connections between them, in order to maintain a viable habitat for native plants and animals; and designing buildings to minimize energy use, including water conservation, as well as maximizing the potential for the recovery and re-use of building elements in the future 

EDAW

Mesa del Sol has hired, EDAW, a multidisciplinary company that works on a variety of landscape design, planning, master planning, programming, design, urban design, environmental consulting, resource planning, information technology services; economic, social and cultural services projects, to assist with the planning.  For more than 65 years, EDAW's collaborative approach to landscape architecture, planning/urban design, environmental planning, and economic, social, and cultural services has shaped sustainable environments across the globe.  Along with their work at Mesa del Sol, EDAW is currently desigining the Olympic Park for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.