Landscape Architecture that Improves Lives and Preserves the Environment

Otak provides planning and design services to national parks across the United States under multiple IDIQ contracts. Our team is experienced with NPS procedures, and our landscape architects work integrally with our design teams on NPS assignments, finding the best solutions to delicately preserve and protect resources while still enhancing visitor experience. This work includes in-park visitor surveys, economic valuations, gateway community studies, and peer reviews of other socioeconomic work.

To support the leisure and entertainment of parks, Otak’s design covers everything from green oases to public parks, greenways, and natural preserves. Our work strengthens the environmental, social, and economic aspects of neighborhoods, improving access to well-planned, well-designed parks and recreation facilities. At its core, our design focuses on the community, including them in the design and user experience of parks and facilities that maintain and improve quality of life.

Our landscape architects actively plan, design, and implement trails and trailhead improvements, supporting multi-modal design and access to recreational spaces. Within in a variety of environments, this work involves pedestrian and bicycle facilities for public and private clients to provide integrated design, delivering the best active transportation solutions for each setting. By working closely with our in-house engineers, we connect destinations within our communities, linking cities and towns together.

Otak has been developing scenic byway management plans and designing visitor amenities for over twenty-five years. We provide planning, as well as marketing and communications support, to understand visitor use patterns and visitor needs and interests. We plan wayfinding and signing, multi-modal transportation facilities, trails and trailheads, interpretive waysides, visitor centers and facilities, and we assess historical and cultural values, natural resources, and visual resource management.

Native plants require intentional stewardship to thrive and recover, and Otak’s landscape architects design spaces that facilitate their rehabilitation. We improve and restore areas with native vegetation, bolstering ecologies with vital native plant life and develop green infrastructure. We design habitats and communities to thrive naturally by improving water quality and promoting natural infiltration, and by focusing on post-disaster recovery of habitats such as after forest fires.