David graduated with a degree in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University, and established Bartsch Landscape Architecture in 1999.
Prior to starting his firm, David spent a decade working with leading firms in Boston and Paris (Martha Schwartz, Craig Halvorson, Morgan Wheelock, Allain Provost), on projects including public parks, regional high schools, assisted living facilities, garden-cemeteries, and custom private homes.
From travels in Europe, Asia, Scandinavia, and across North America, David reinterprets the successful ingredients of large and small landmark settings to create unique and engaging landscapes that contribute in their own way to the better built environment.
The objective is beautiful, well-loved, and durable places. The key factors are respectful client service, ever-growing knowledge of proven methods in design and construction, and keeping an open mind to fresh ideas for exceptional results.
David leads projects with diverse teams from needs and options review, through design and construction, to operations. David’s close project management integrates and controls schedules, budgets, and scopes of work. His proactive involvement results in high-quality projects, excellent customer service, and measurable cost savings.
Bartsch Landscape Architecture transforms everyday spaces into extraordinary places.
See the downloadable CV for more information on David’s background, education, and professional affiliations.
Funny you should ask. To make a long story short, I had cooked in high-end restaurant kitchens after school, weekends, and summers from the time I was 12. Why I worked so much is a question for another time… At 19 years old on an internship from my culinary school, I was working for an Austrian pastry chef, Hermann Wayd, at the Balsams Hotel in Dicksville Notch. That’s a classic 19th c. resort hotel in the same style as the Mount Washington in Bretton Woods. I asked Hermann if he could be my mentor and train me, but he said he wanted to retire. He suggested I go to Lech, Austria where he had worked, and he would recommend me.
Two years and a couple restaurants later, I’d earned a culinary degree and flew out for Lech, sidestepping to see my brother who lived in Paris. He had worked in Austria and told me that without knowing German, I’d never get a job there, but because I knew French, I should work in France, learn German on the side, and then get to Austria.
I found a position at Le Chapeau Gris, a small but fine restaurant in Versailles, a city 10 miles west of Paris.
In my time off I discovered Paris, its monuments and parks and boulevards and tiny back streets, its courtyards and riverwalks, the forests to the east and west. I naively thought someone should make these kinds of places for the U.S.
Little did I know of the long history of landscape architecture around the world – F. L. Olmsted, A. Le Notre, A. Provost, T. Church, M. Van Valkenburgh, M. Schwartz.
But I got hooked. No way, I thought, do people actually get to do this for a living. That next fall I got into landscape architecture at UMass Amherst for four years as an undergrad and then three years of grad school at Harvard.
Maybe in the next lifetime I’ll get to Lech to work in that pastry shop. In the meantime, I’m forever reminded of the great places I’ve been lucky to visit, and the incredible influences each holds for interpreting how our built spaces might be composed.
