Tricia Quaid Travels Without Moving For Design Inspiration During The COVID Pandemic

In the isolation stage of the early COVID-19 pandemic, it was impossible to travel — for work or pleasure. For Tricia Quaid, a talented landscape designer, it was untenable.

“I am used to traveling and have been around the world and I feel that these experiences have broadened me both personally and as a designer,” Quaid said. Always searching for new inspiration and with the restrictions of quarantine, Quaid chose to take her travels a little closer to home with the thingstododc virtual events.

“I have used the opportunity to partake in a few virtual sightseeing lectures. I went to Jerusalem virtually one evening touring inside the Jerusalem walls,” she said. “Another time I virtually went to Barcelona, Spain, and toured the Picasso Museum, the Gaudi Parks, and the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. I went to Barcelona many years ago but thoroughly enjoyed the renewed visit — without having to pack bags, of course. By no means can this take the place of really experiencing a culture, but it helped me feel a part of the larger world during a very lonely COVID isolation.” 

Getting inspiration during a pandemic takes a lot of creativity, which is what you’ll hear more about during the Dallas Architecture Forum‘s Design inspiration panel at 6:30 p.m. March 1. The discussion, which is moderated by Gensler design director Ian Zapata, will include Quaid, BOKA Powell project designer Daniel Gunn, and architect Cliff Welch. The event, which will be at First Unitarian Church of Dallas (4015 Normandy Ave., Dallas, 75205), is free and open to the public.

Of course, with Quaid’s line of work, there are some things you just can’t do from a home office.

“We still can’t do an installation or perform garden enhancement nor maintenance remotely, but we have had meetings with clients on Zoom,” she said. “Since the pandemic, my designer has moved out of state unrelated to COVID, but we have learned to work on a shared drive and have tightened up the design process.”  

That sharper design process has resulted in a remarkable project that incorporates something of a palimpsest — a concept with intricately layered meaning — of design.

Her firm’s first public space was designed for a company called Orthofix, which makes medical products that help patients heal after orthopedic surgery. Quaid worked to upgrade the entrance garden of the corporate campus, which not only hosts employees but has classrooms for training surgeons.

“The program was to upgrade their entrance garden to provide an aesthetically pleasing space for the doctors and their employees,” Quaid detailed. “The custom powder-coated steel containers were the company’s logo blue, and the Escofet benches replicate the look of bones.”

Actually getting and installing the benches required a lot of patience and resourcefulness, she said. “These were shipped in from Spain, during the pandemic. They were a few weeks late, but we managed to get this project completed on time.”

Considering our current supply chain, that’s worth celebrating.