Designing Woman Still Evolving Style
Landscape architect Linda Tycher will tell you she comes from a “building family” — and she does.
Daughter to Fred Tycher, one of the builders of the first luxury apartments behind the pink wall in Preston Center, Tycher says she inherited her designing ability from her father. So did her brother and sister, an apartment builder and interior designer respectively.
“I had very ahead-of-[their]-time, encouraging parents. And when I expressed an interest in [landscape architecture], they said ‘well, that’s an interesting field,’” Tycher said.
She expressed enthusiasm for the landscaping sector as a teenager, when she worked for a landscape architect in Dallas. While attending Hillcrest High School, she attended previews for careers in commercial art, architecture, and landscape architecture.
projects
Mockingbird light rail station: 1993
Aaron Residence in Preston Hollow: 2001
Shops at Highland Village: 2007
The Taylor: 2012
Turtle Creek Village: 2015
After studying landscape architecture at Michigan State University, where she was one of two women in her classes, Tycher graduated in 1971 and was hired by the university as a campus planner.
She returned south, and after a four year stint in Houston, Tycher decided to come back to her roots in Dallas to start her own practice.
As the founder and principal of Linda Tycher & Associates since 1978, Tycher can boast of her firm being a Historically Underutilized Business, and North Central Texas Regional Certification Agency-certified as a 100 percent woman-owned firm.
The company’s projects range from high-end residential to urban infill multifamily to campus planning — all accomplished with a five-person office.
“What I hear from my clients and what I pride myself on is we have a vision for a project,” said Tycher. “The main thing we offer is very strong follow-through.”
The firm’s project portfolio includes involvement in the first light rail project for the city of Dallas from 1989 to 1995.
A large percentage of her single-family residential clients have been in Preston Hollow, where Tycher has been a resident for over 30 years. One of her larger projects in the area was the Aaron residence, seven acres in the heart of Preston Hollow.
In 2004, Tycher was called by the owners of the Hotel Palomar — now known as the Highland — on Mockingbird Lane to be the landscape architect for the building. It’s the same hotel her father designed and developed in 1967, when it was called the Hilton Inn.
Tycher’s experiences have prepared her for the different trends she has seen over the years.
“We are always trying to borrow and coordinate with the architecture and weave that into the amenities available,” said Tycher, whose current projects reflect trends in water conservation, urban design, historic renovation, and more.
“I call us a design studio,” she said. “And that’s what we’re all about.”
