Through its rich artistic history, ground-breaking publications on affordable housing, and free art education and admission, the North Carolina Museum of Art Winston-Salem embodies a life-long commitment to the beauty found in celebration of the human experience.   The 14-acre museum and grounds just north of Downtown Winston-Salem offer a diverse range of experiences that embody this devotion. However, when examined, these exceptional opportunities, spanning artful encounters, natural immersion, and educational pursuits, reveal persistent barriers and vulnerabilities that impact community access to and ecological health of the Grounds.

Mud led a team of expert ecological designers and architects produced a grounds master plan that envisions a harmonious blend of building and site function, ecological regeneration, and imaginative spaces. To that end, it introduces the three aspirations - Community, Ecology, and Imagination - as guiding principles to synthesize the project. Shaped by formal and informal community meetings, Grounds-themed art projects, and the innovative use of cutting-edge technology, the transformation of SECCA's Grounds stands out as a pioneering project, intertwining environmental significance, radical design, and a commitment to enriching the local and regional community.

Mud is working on advancing this design through construction.

Thaden School is an independent school located in downtown Bentonville, Arkansas. As the landscape and site design lead, working with Eskew+Dumez+Ripple and Marlon Blackwell architects, Ben Monette helped create a campus for an innovative, integrative science and humanities curriculum revolving around the three themes of meals (food), wheels (bicycles), and reels (film-making. The design team developed a series of complementary indoor and outdoor teaching spaces that promote sustainability and hands-on learning.

The Thaden School campus will challenge students to fully engage their minds and bodies throughout an integrated campus with programmatic centers for teaching, gathering, and celebrating; agricultural landscapes for eating, feeding, and cooperative work; and natural landscapes and corridors to provide ecosystem services and exposure to natural processes, such as water, and plant communities of the unique eco-region, as well as spaces for motion and reflection.

Mud founder Ben Monette was the design lead on this award-winning project that spanned from master planning to construction.

AWARDS

2023 AIA Regional and Urban Design Award in Architecture

2023 AIA Award in Architecture, the Bike Barn at Thaden School

2022 James D. MacConnell Award

2022 AIA Award in Architecture, the Home Buldng at Thaden School

2020 AIA Arkansas Honor Award, The Thaden School Reels Building

2019 ASLA Southeast Regional Conference Recognition Award in Analysis and Planning

Images Courtesy: Andropogon, Eskew + Dumez + Ripple and Marlon Blackwell Architects

The design of Dilworth Park took on many forms, and Ben worked as a Project Manager towards the latter part of that cycle. He oversaw a complex construction process as OLIN was a co-lead with design partners Kieran Timberlake and Urban Engineers. Throughout what would be a politically, technically, and logistically challenging process from initial concept to the final product, the overarching design move was never lost: by lowering the plinth of the sunken plaza to street level, OLIN provided universal access to historical Dilworth Park and created a contemporary public space worthy of its prominent location at the base of City Hall.

Two sculptural glass pavilions are gateways to the transit concourse below and establish Dilworth Park as a vibrant new transit hub in the city. A programmable scrim fountain that doubles as a winter ice rink is also an actively programmed light sculpture designed by Janet Echelman, transmitting the movement of trains below with changing colored ribbons of light and atomized fog. Dilworth Plaza also utilizes numerous green infrastructure elements, including a stormwater cistern below the gently sloping lawn panel which provides both passive green space and flexibility for active programming. A café accommodates lunch crowds with casual, movable tables and chairs. A bosque of trees and an attractive understory of native shrubs and grasses enclose the lawn and café.

AWARDS

ASLA Award of Excellence in Urban Design

AIA Philadelphia Silver Medal (unbuilt)

AIA Pennsylvania Honor Award (unbuilt)

AIA Philadelphia Gold Medal (built)

Urban Land Institute Philadelphia, Willard Rouse Award for Excellence

Chicago Athenaeum Green Good Design Award

Image Courtesy: © OLIN / photos by Sahar Coston, Kierin Timberlake, Urban Engineers

Additional Rendering Credit: Trevor Lee

House In A Garden is an urban infill project nestled into the historic Bahamian neighborhood of Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood. Situated adjacent to Biscayne Bay, the single-story house and grounds embrace the existing scale of the neighboring structures, the hyper-local ecological vernacular, and the cultural approaches to community and neighborhood values. As the first mass timber project in Miami, House In A Garden interrogates material application and ingenuity through the lens of energy, ecology, and local traditions to help define and blend the notions of "house" and "garden." 

The rapidly evolving dynamism and intensity of South Florida's environmental conditions and development pressures challenge landscape and building performance with tree canopy loss, driving rain, flooding, salt spray, high humidity, and enormous wind forces. The integrated approach to orchestrating stormwater management, large tree preservation, native plant selections, urban farming, large roof overhangs, breathable building envelope, and mass timber structural systems works together as an innovative demonstration of new building technology, cultural expression, and multifunction landscape performance in communities of need.

Mud worked with Architects Atelier Mey on this stunning award winning and ground breaking residence.

AWARDS

NCASLA Award of Merit

Architectural Record, Published, Jul 2024

Founded over a century ago on the idea that underserved and oppressed women of Appalachia could seize economic and cultural power through the art of weaving and working of textiles, the Penland School of Craft is committed to fostering a community that welcomes and respects every person. Its mission is to support individual and artistic growth through creative practice and discovery. Recently, through a courageous act of vulnerability, they faced the physical qualities of the campus that were not representative of their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The result of that reflection and the subsequent planning effort is an ambitious, community-focused master plan that uses the latest in creative outreach, state-of-the-art digital tools, on-site data collection, and thoughtful, honest dialogue to allow the campus to undergo a positive and unambiguous evolution.

The plan presents a weaving of a scalable landscape structure with new site programming, an eclectic collection of contemporary and noteworthy historic architecture, and improved accessible site circulation to create an ambitious and daring model for applied compassion at the campus scale.

There are multiple projects currently in Schematic Design including new Administrative offices, as well as Metal, Clay, and Weaving Studios. The first phase of the loop road is in Design Development which will be a major step in pulling all but the service, ADA, and emergency vehicular traffic from the interior of the campus.

AWARDS

2022 NCASLA Honor Award for Analysis and Planning

2023 SE Regional Merit Award in Analysis and Planning

As part of a generous donation from fashion designer Stuart Weitzman, this existing plaza on the University of Pennsylvania campus was re-imagined to better connect to and through the campus from Penn Park to Blanche Levy Park and along Locust Walk to Hamilton Village. OLIN was the prime consultant on this effort, and Ben was the project landscape architect. This complex undertaking where custom furnishings, finely tuned structural soil and intricate physical tie-ins to existing architecture.

Images Courtesy: © OLIN

Additional Rendering Credit: Moya Sun, Josh Ketchum

Ben worked with OLIN to help design the 6.25-acre landscape of the new patient care building at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which includes a new entrance courtyard, gardens and circulation sequence, as well as a dedicated children’s garden. The primary goal for the Entry Court was to enable clear patterns of entry and egress for a myriad of purposes, including patient transport and staff and visitor circulation. OLIN’s design provides an efficient space for cars to pick up and drop off patients, ambulance access for the new Adult and Pediatric Emergency Departments, valet service areas for the adjacent parking garage, and pedestrian bridges to minimize pedestrian/vehicular conflicts. This solution retained one-third of the football field-sized site for use as a series of gardens, conceived as sensory-rich and visually harmonious paces of orientation, respite, rejuvenation and calm for patients, visitors and employees alike. Plantings were selected specifically to offer rich sensory experiences and are arranged in ways that provide a feeling of intimacy and mitigate the impact of the surrounding roads and urban areas. The colors and geometry of the designs are also responsive to those who can view the gardens from the windows of the new building, connecting the interior with the outdoors and enhancing the patient experience.

In addition to the Entry Court, OLIN also designed a separate children’s garden nestled next to the Phipps Courtyard between the new clinical building and the historic Phipps building. Based on the adventures of Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, this garden features large and small asteroids, volcanoes, overhead stars and the “Birdgola,” a trellis-like structure that has a colorful flock of birds suspended from movable tracks. The plants in the Little Prince Garden were selected for their unusual characteristics, textures and colors to create delight and recall the whimsical story.

OLIN was asked to change an existing site design that the project donor did regard as living up to the standards set by the building. As such, Ben’s role was that of Senior Landscape architect and was responsible for the design implementation but active, in the field design changes, where his drawings and sometimes hands-on communication were key to the success of the project.

AWARDS

Excellence in Design Citation, Institutional Architecture AIA Maryland

Best of Year Finalist Award in Large Healthcare Category Interior Design

Design Honor Award SARA National

Design Award Citation, Institutional Category Best of Healthcare Project Award of Merit ENR News Record, Mid-Atlantic

Image Courtesy: © OLIN / photos by Sahar Coston , © Perkins-Will

The goal of the new renovation to the dated and deteriorated Durham County Main Library was to physically express the ideas of discovery, community, and literacy. Library design has evolved to reflect the way knowledge is consumed and created. While acting as the Design Leader for Andropopon, Ben worked with the Vines Architecture team to pull the building program to and through the building. The co-ideas of transparency and connectivity were key to the site layout and design.

Virtually all of the 3-acre site is programmed to extend learning into the landscape. As a civic space, the front porch acts as a place to see and be seen and a transitional connection between the activity inside and outside. The amphitheater conveys and celebrates the stormwater from the roof and acts as a central gathering area for lectures and performances.

The landscape’s flexibility mirrors that of the building to provide usable, meaningful space for years to come. To serve that end, there are opportunities for natural play and private study “nesting” spaces for teens and knowledge seekers of all ages.

Finally, the landscape tells a story of native North Carolina via the eco-region-specific planting and pollinator-friendly habitat. Both tie to existing programming within the Library, and both help bond the Library to the history of Durham. As part of an expression of place, an opportunity to find respite in an outdoor laboratory for learning, this high-performance landscape feathers the building to the land and the site to the city.

AWARDS

AIA Triangle Honor Award: Design

AIA NC Merit Award (Unbuilt): Design

Courtesy: andropogon, Vines Architecture

The Westminster School is 200 acre private school in Atlanta that hosts preschool through high school curriculum. It considered by many to be one of the top private schools in that city. The master plan created a framework for development that takes advantage of the existing and planned physical structures and land so that the outdoor and indoor spaces enable the program, teaching and learning the school wanted to do. The master plan and design are meant to change and evolve over time and represent the physical manifestation of the schools values of a caring, community, and excellence.

The campus is intended to allow students and staff to be a part of a community that is tightly knit and has a very strong culture and fabric. The plan is also maintains a sense of history while expressing the contemporary evolution of the delivery of information and education.

Mud founder Ben Monette worked with Ennead Architects and was the Design and Planning Lead at Andropon for this project.

Image credit: Andropogon, Ennead Architects, Westminster Schools

Duke Research Drive is currently a car-dominated street overrun with folks walking along and across its length, and it is rife with vehicular and pedestrian conflicts. The goal was to capitalize on the large right-of-way and up the street on a “road diet” that added bike lanes to either side and created gracious sidewalks and raised crosswalks. There was a major focus on stormwater capture and treatment, carbon-positive design, and equitable physical access.

While at Surface 678 in Durham, Ben led the design and planning to develop this award-winning plan

AWARDS

NC ASLA | Merit Award, Analysis & Planning

Image Courtesy: Surface 678, Duke University

Additional Rendering Credit: Jonathan Haller

An undeniably crucial player in the unprecedented transformation of Dilworth Plaza, an underused failed public space, into the dynamic and well-loved Dilworth Park is Janet Echelman’s “Pulse” sculpture. Embedded in the new park’s 11,600-square foot fountain, “Pulse" traces in the surface of the fountain the paths of the subway and trolley lines that converge under Dilworth Park. As trains pass beneath, four-foot-tall curtains of colorful atomized mist travel across the park fountain’s surface following the transit lines that that bring more than 70,000 passengers to the site each day.

Ben worked closely with Echelman’s team and lead the technical integration of art, engineering, and landscape to create this one of a kind interactive fog-and -light phenomenon in Center City Philadelphia.

Image Courtesy: © OLIN / photos by Sahar Coston, © Janet Echelman

Cleveland is in a moment of profound transition. Following decades of industrial decline, population loss, and proliferation of abandoned lots, parts of Cleveland are beginning to come back, guided by sound institutions, a burgeoning Health Care industry, non-profit and philanthropic partnerships, and local citizens. Initiatives such as Re-Imagining Cleveland have already helped reveal creative solutions to address the challenges faced by shrinking cities across the region and nation. Green Over Gray leverages Project Clean Lake - the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District’s $3 billion investment and city-wide construction endeavor to deliver not just clean water, but clean air, resilient landscapes, wildlife habitat, healthy citizens, strong communities, and resurgent neighborhoods.

Ben was the project manager organizing and leading through conceptual designs where the notion of water infrastructure building was expanded to integrate landscape-based stormwater management, links to natural resources, equitable social spaces, performative neighborhood connections, and community re-investment. Eventually, the green infrastructure operations enacted in the Doan Brook Focus Area become lessons for the process to continue throughout the rest of the city as Project Clean Lake protects more and more of the District’s water resources over the next 25 years.

Image Courtesy: ©OLIN

Additional Rendering Credit: Mike Miller, Greg Burrell, Chris Landau, Marni Burnes

OLIN is well known for collaboration with the highest quality architects worldwide as well as acclaimed public artists. OLIN’s relationship with Janet Echelman has culminated in a work of hers installed in Dilworth Park. As part of an overall re-conception of an urban plaza that was largely regarded as a failure, the new plaza will be open and inviting with new transit entry points designed by Kieran Timberlake along with Janet’s celebration of fog and light, vividly announcing the arrival of transit below.

Energized by this work in Philadelphia, Janet asked OLIN to provide studies, and work with her to develop and construct her vision for an earthwork that would both receive and frame her ethereal net sculpture during GLOW. GLOW is an all-night cultural experience featuring original commissions by artists that re-imagine Santa Monica Beach as a playground for thoughtful and participatory artworks. Ben lead a week-long Santa Monica design/build effort to create Janet’s piece: “The Space Between Us”. Through OLIN, Ben’s collaborations with Janet have proven fruitful and allowed us to push the boundaries of both art and landscape.

Courtesy: © OLIN and © Janet Echleman

The Guest House Raleigh is a boutique hotel in downtown Raleigh that seamlessly blends clean, calm lines with beauty, function, and light. With owners Matt Tomasulo and Nicole Alverez, AIA as distinguished designers this truly collaborative effort with Mud resulted in landscape that at once manages 90% of all the stormwater and creates an elegant and comfortable oasis. The views to and from the site were considered and care was taken to frame each window with a pleasing vantage to the outside.

Matt and Nicole moved it and made it happen. We planted it.

Images Credit: Nicole Alvarez, Matt Tomasulo

Situated along the historic George Washington Memorial Parkway and within a remnant tidal wetland and former railyard and brownfield, Ben led the Andropogon team as they worked with the City of Alexandria and its residents to design a new public park and WMATA Metrorail station landscape that mitigated both the visual and environmental impacts of the new station. As Design Leader, Ben provided master planning, site design and design development documentation services for the Potomac Yard Metrorail Station Project, in addition to the site design and documentation of Potomac Greens Park.

The Potomac Greens Park, adjacent to the proposed Metrorail Station, includes a passive recreational trail system, innovative green infrastructure strategies, a 5-acre wetland restoration with a boardwalk system, a multi-modal bridge, a bike storage facility, and a children’s play space.

Courtesy: andropogon associates

Mud worked closely with owners Jason and Jeanne Queen and architects, Clearscapes, of The Ware to develop a landscape that is at once lush and full of ecological opportunity, while deriving its structure from clean, contemporary-modern lines. Consisting of 15 individual residences, The Ware features a distinctly fresh look and feel on the interior with complimentary outdoor spaces that have a decidedly urban connection to the local context.

Mud was inspired by the proximity of the site to the Capital City Greenway leading to NCMA and beyond to the surrounding region. These large-scale connections and dynamics reflected in the texture, layout, and rhythm of hardscape and planting.

Ben led the concept design effort for Cook Park in Atlanta which is currently under construction. Working closely with the Trust for Public Land and the City of Atlanta, the 16 acre site was reimagined as a 16 acre, state-of-the-art city park that would also serve to reduce flooding in Vine City, the neighborhood in which it is located.

Through a comprehensive public outreach process, the park’s unique character has been brought to the fore and it will feature playgrounds, sports courts, public performances, and a variety of other multiuse and causal spaces for all to enjoy. The park is designed to alleviate flooding for the 150 acres of surrounding residential neighborhoods and reduce water pollution risks to the source of Atlanta’s drinking water situated downstream.

Courtesy: © HDR, © The Trust for Public Land, © Andropogon Associates

For over 100 years the Reading Viaduct was an active elevated rail line that carried passengers and mail to the Reading Terminal until it was decommissioned in 1984. Two sections of the rail, the City Branch and the 9th Street Branch, alternate between elevated and sunken levels just north of Center City Philadelphia. This important remnant of industrial and civic history of the city has since become inhabited by verdant life—pioneer grasses, trees and shrubs have taken root in the nooks and crannies of retaining walls and in the rock ballast between the steel rails and wooden ties.

Ben was the project manager for OLIN’s work in conjunction stakeholder groups and VIADUCTgreene, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the reuse of the abandoned rail, re-envisions the City Branch portion of the viaduct as an accessible public green space in a part of Philadelphia that is lacking such civic areas. The concept for the viaduct is built out of the cultural and historical legacy of the place to serve a venue for the arts and the preservation of the industrial legacy—an essential narrative that has yet to be told. The design’s green infrastructure strategies include increasing the urban forest and pervious surfaces to help divert stormwater from the city’s aged combined sewer system and mitigate runoff pollution while increasing amenity and habitat within the city. This new public amenity will provide passive open space complemented with lush garden greenery, pedestrian and cycling trails, spaces for arts and exhibitions, and create and outdoor classroom for the adjacent Community College of Philadelphia. The viaduct offers the unique opportunity to integrate rejuvenating and wild nature into the civic domain.

Image Courtesy: © OLIN

Additional Rendering Credit: Will Belcher, Jessica Henson, Henry Moll

Tactical Urbanism is about design in action. This approach presents itself as low-cost, short-term micro-interventions within an urban environment. The idea is to inspire action and conversation around equity and public space.

At OLIN, Ben led a public discourse about the value of parks in our cities. And through a PARK(ing) Day annual event aligns with the studio’s commitment to the possibilities of the urban realm believing it to be where design can affect the most positive change.

Ben’s concept was selected as the winning entry in the internal competition held at OLIN. It asked an array of questions more than it provided solutions. For example, what does it mean to demonstrate the need for parks and open space in an area that may not be the ideal location for a park? What is the environmental impact of creating a temporary demonstration that would be discarded after its use? What are we learning about society’s ambivalence towards the automobile—a tool which we often disparage, but rely upon and to a large degree, cherish?

Ben also became interested in the dichotomy embodied in cars: the juxtaposition of their private interior space with the very public realm of an urban street through which they move. All of this, in an odd way, becomes a chaotic mélange of many people, in a public space, sharing autonomous experiences. This is a Park pulls public space into the very private interior of the automobile. The design hopes to recognize how much the car is still valued in our society while demonstrating the merits of public space. The installation is intended to tell the passersby that on this day, This is a Park.

Courtesy: © OLIN / photos by Sahar Coston

A great deal of humankind’s greatest recognizable markings have come in the form of a memorial. These memorials share many common traits. As society progressed, these traits reflected a growing understanding of mathematics, engineering, art and design. Strong geometries once based on celestial movements were all but cast aside as the contemporary cemetery often relies on the English Landscape notion of superimposed geometric grids of gravestones surrounded by large trees, manicured grass, and gently winding paths. For our solution, we looked for a way to supersede the idea of the English Garden Memorial with a deeper understanding and reverence for the ecological benefits of the wilderness.

As the first step of our woodland intervention, we replace the grid of gravestones with a grid of trees. Within that grid, a new composition of the stone pieces is arranged to create a social space for the living to celebrate the act of remembrance, as the space itself harkens to the somber notion of a traditional memorial. The stones are wrapped in timbers to create a biotic and abiotic sculpture that displays the fruitful process of decomposition of a fallen tree by fungi that in time will disintegrate and unearth stone. At the interface between the proposed intervention and the existing woodland, native herbaceous species will be planted as a “white garden” to provide 3 important functions:

• Create a social space for remembrance based on a heightened understanding of ecological function

• To illuminate the forest with a halo of native white flowers among the otherwise dappled darkness of the woodland; and,

• To “seal the edge” by preventing opportunities for invasive species to proliferate at the disturbed edge

Mud uses a variety of analog and digital tools to visualize complex problems. This is a little gallery of rotating imagery that will be updated every so often…please check back for something new!

Top to bottom:

Coastal Ideation

Coyote Park

Granite Bench

Dendrite

Roof Decked

Virginia Tech Sketch