Aceto Landscape Architects

nice morning on main street at prescott post, a new community in portsmouth.

This is what outer ring urbanism looks like. A repurposing of a former 20-acre commercial site. Once a massive sea of parking will now be 360 homes, over 2 acres of community space, walkable streets and courtyards, and a new community building with community rooms, gym, and outdoor terraces.

Trick-or-Treat Planning. 🎃

All we really set out to do was create great trick-or-treat neighborhoods.

Walkable streets, front porches, sidewalks, benches, and not a driveway in sight.

Turns out, what makes a great neighborhood on Halloween makes a pretty great neighborhood the other 364 days of the year, too.

FLOAT.

Powerful moments happen in the places in between.

Golden drifts of blonde ambition grama fold and dance in the wind. Boardwalk-inspired benches recall long summer days at the beach, floating above a sea of grasses.

A little bit of wild in the everyday.

photography: Peter Morneau

FLOAT.

Powerful moments happen in the places in between.

Golden drifts of blonde ambition grama fold and dance in the wind. Boardwalk-inspired benches recall long summer days at the beach, floating above a sea of grasses.

A little bit of wild in the everyday.

ADAPT + REUSE.

From parking lots to places for people.

Prescott Post is transforming a former Christmas Tree Shops site in Portsmouth, NH into a new 360-home community rooted in the landscape of the Granite State.

And we’re starting with the granite itself.

Thousands of linear feet of salt-and-pepper granite curbing, once defining acres of asphalt, are being reclaimed and reimagined as bands of stone weaving through the new community. Like veins in bedrock, they’ll connect public spaces, guide movement, and bring a little of the White Mountains into the everyday landscape.

Less waste. More meaning. A new life for an old material.

For over three years, AKLA has helped lead the master planning, permitting, and implementation of one of New Hampshire’s largest new housing developments, collaborating with Utile Architecture & Planning and Tighe & Bond.

360 new homes. One entirely reimagined landscape.

TEN.

Ten is just a number. It also happens to be the exact number of years this month since we founded our studio in Portland.

It’s also a pretty small number compared to some of the others.

1,500+ homes. 5,000+ trees. 100+ miles of sidewalks. 1,000+ acres of parks, open spaces, courtyards, gardens, and plazas.

And countless sketches, conversations, collaborations, and ideas along the way.

This year also marks 15 years as an independent business and more than 75 years of collective experience among our team.

Inspired by nature and energized by our community, we’ve spent the past decade working in our own backyard, challenging conventions and pushing for a more thoughtful, engaging vision of public space in Greater Portland.

We’ve been fortunate to work alongside an incredible community of designers, makers, builders, clients, and friends who share our belief that good design matters, and that the places we create can bring people together, connect us to nature, and make everyday life a little better.

We’re proud of what we’ve built, grateful to everyone who’s been part of it, and excited for what’s next.

Ten is just a number. The work is real.

AKLA. Independent by design.

the point is people.

we draw people into spaces long before those spaces exist.

a conversation on a bench. a child exploring. a familiar walk through town. a quiet moment overlooking the landscape.

these small moments of everyday life are where our design process begins—and where the core of our practice takes shape: connecting people to their environment.

drawing is how we explore possibility. how we test ideas, imagine experiences, and begin to understand not just what a place might look like, but what it might feel like to be there.

because the measure of a well-designed place isn’t simply how it looks.

it’s how people live in it, and how deeply they feel connected to the world around them.

the point is to connect.

the point house, designed by Winkelman Architecture , is a study in the relationship between architecture, landscape, and the larger world beyond.

within the courtyard, the vast geography of the maine coast is drawn inward. slender bands of stone drift through gravel and islands of native planting, echoing the rocky points, coves, and wooded islands of the surrounding coastline.

here, the landscape becomes a miniature world beneath your feet—a quiet abstraction of the geography beyond.

as you move through the house, the scale shifts. the intimate courtyard gives way to the expansive coastal landscape, where the same forms reveal themselves in rock, forest, water, and distant islands.

a landscape within a landscape. a connection between the intimate and the infinite.

photography: Jeff Roberts

We’re growing.

Aceto Kimball is looking for designers to join our studios in Portland, Maine and Jackson, New Hampshire.

We’re interested in designers at all levels who are highly skilled in design communication, curious thinkers, and passionate about placemaking—from intimate gardens and landscapes to public spaces, campuses, and new communities.

If you care deeply about place, landscape, and how ideas are communicated, we’d like to hear from you.

Come shape the future with us.

maine newhampshire portlandmaine whitemountains

At the foot of Maine’s tallest building is a humble courtyard.

Veins of quartzite run through granite walls quarried along the Downeast coast, recalling the bedrock that shapes Maine’s mountains and shoreline. Delicate bronze inlays trace across the stone, catching the light among ferns, weathered wood, and granite.

For nearly ten years, AKLA has been creating bespoke public spaces throughout Portland. The work often sits quietly within the city—sometimes overshadowed by the buildings and urban canyons around it.

But look a little closer and you’ll find pieces of Maine woven into these places. Materials, textures, plants, and details that remind you where you are—and perhaps of the places you love beyond the city.

Small moments of landscape that invite you to stop, notice, and stay awhile in the sun.
Christina Watka