Employee Profiles

Jim Schaefer is a landscape architect with fourteen years of detailed site design experience. His focus is the layout of functional and artistic outdoor spaces. While the planners at Vandewalle & Associates envision large scale land uses and redevelopment opportunities, Jim is focused on the design of detailed site plans for venues such as urban plazas, streetscapes, commercial and retail centers, campuses, and parks. A strength is the creation of compelling site features such as masonry monuments, ornamental metalwork features, custom landscape structures and buildings, park shelters, trellage and arbors, and planting schemes. He translates local and regional opportunities into architecturally appropriate project icons and features. Jim is skilled in the creation of graphic design concepts, detailed construction plans and specifications, site construction budgets, lighting, and irrigation plans. He is also experienced with providing design workshops, design presentations, and lectures.

Jim spent the previous eight years with Buettner & Associates, Landscape Architects in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While there he honed his skills designing public gardens, public urban plazas, architectural features, commercial development planting schemes, and resort environments. Prior to Buettner, Jim apprenticed for three years at Miyabara Associates in Honolulu, Hawaii. Park design was the focus—from neighborhood to regional in scale.

Jim served as a plan commissioner, and architectural review board member in Glendale, Wisconsin from 1999-2002. And he consulted for the City of Glendale on landscape design review issues.

At Vandewalle & Associates, Jim is primarily responsible for urban redevelopment design projects. He is currently designing a new public plaza space in the historic center of the Village of Grafton, Wisconsin; and an enhanced streetscape for the Mannheim Road Corridor in Hillside, Illinois; and is part of a team creating a new riverwalk in Waterloo, Iowa. This renovation will create a more attractive and engaging waterfront, and a dynamic civic amphitheater.

Education
B.S. Landscape Architecture
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin

Professional Licenses, Registrations, and Memberships
Registered Landscape Architect, Wisconsin
Member, American Society of Landscape Architects
Member, American Planning Association
Former Member, City of Glendale, Wisconsin Plan Commission
Former Member, City of Glendale, Wisconsin Architectural Review Board
1992 ASLA Honor Award Recipient, Wisconsin Student Chapter