Gravity Studios

We make magic out of local insight.

We believe that creating awesome places that attract people means involving those most local in the process—whether they be young professionals, parents, teenagers, even deer or plants (though we haven’t gotten a deer to attend a design workshop just yet). We’ve seen what happens when local folks aren’t involved, and it often means headaches and wasted money for everyone.

Magic happens when locals get a say. Insights abound. Culture informs design. Strangers become neighbors. Attention turns into care. Biodiversity gets a boost. Ecosystems get healthier. Increased connections turn into long-term resilience. That’s what Gravity does: it draws everything together.

Our Specialties & Services

Placemaking

From quick consults, to workshops, to renderings and plans, to community-involved action, if you want a vibrant hub for community, we’ll help it happen.

Permaculture Design

Dreaming of space for more-than-human beings? We’ll get to know your land and create plans that you can use to foster regenerative and biodiverse landscapes.

Illustration

Sometimes you don’t need a plan; you just an illustration that captivates the imagination and conveys recent changes. We can help others see your vision.

Below are some of the most common services:

Know that a place you have a say about is underutilized… confusing… or just not living up to its potential, but don’t know where to start? For locations in Northeast Pennsylvania, we’re happy to stop in, walk around with you, and then provide a detailed list of what’s holding your space back and where you might consider starting. For further flung places, we can meet you over Zoom.
This could be your starting place for a Placemaking, Permaculture, or Illustration Project.

Know where to start, but not the particulars of what to do? We’ll come in, get to know a few ‘local experts’, and find where everyone’s needs converge. We’ll provide a custom step-by-step guide on how to move forward, complete with sketches. You’ll see the place in a whole new light AND have the tools to move forward.
This could be your starting place for a Placemaking or Permaculture Project.

Your place is… complicated. Or, perhaps has a lot of people with a lot to say. We’ll conduct a survey or workshop that sifts out the key needs, and we’ll provide a detailed step-by-step guide on how to move forward, complete with sketches. You’ll have the resources you need to keep people excited and involved in turning ideas into reality.
This could be your starting place for a Placemaking or Permaculture Project.

You’re not just interested in improving a single place; you’ve got a whole block or even a downtown in mind. The process will very much depend on your most recent comprehensive plan or other planning documents and what your goals are, and may take several months to complete. Our specialty is rural and small downtowns, so if you’ve got more than 25K people to consider, we’d be happy to refer you to someone else.
This could be your starting place for a Placemaking Project.

So you want to turn your backyard into a place that supports biodiverse food systems for humans and more-than-humans? And you live in Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey? We’ll get to know you and your land. We’ll then combine that knowledge with our deep practice of care, listening, and design to create a plan with step-by-step instructions on what to do and plant where to ensure that the place you call home supports a wide array of life.
This could be your starting place for a Permaculture Project.

You manage a campus, a park, a downtown, or something similar, and your previous map is out of date. You need a refresh, but more than that, you believe in the power of maps to shift how people see and interact with a place, and ultimately, how important that place becomes to them. And you want your place to be really important to people. We’ll meet up with you in person or over zoom, and get a sense of your goals. We’ll draft your idea, refine it, and provide several opportunities for feedback until you’re convinced that it’s the best map we’ve created so far.
This could be your starting place for an Illustration Project.

Meet Lisa Glover

Lisa’s interest in public space design began at age 9, when she was told that she was too young to help build a playground. She carried this passion into her education in Architecture and Entrepreneurship at Lehigh University, where she realized something important: To design the best possible anything, you need to involve those who will use it in the design process.

After a stint in product design that involved a viral Kickstarter campaign and a 15ft long cardboard velociraptor at the White House, Placemaking became her focus. Subsequent projects and plans have extended from murals to playgrounds, from Rutland VT to Selma AL. People from age 2 to 84 have meaningfully participated. But over time it became clear that thinking long-term meant considering more than just human well-being.

Completing her Permaculture Design Certificate at Oregon State University and shadowing permaculture experts has helped Lisa to design with the needs of local plants and animals in mind. After all, whether it’s a town’s maintenance concerns or a client’s budget, designing for resilience and regeneration makes sense for everyone.

What Clients Say

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“Lisa really got a sense of both me living with the land and the land itself, and what she developed after both inspires me and connects me to this land with more depth, dedication, and direction”

“Working with Lisa on a Permaculture Plan unveiled layers and layers of amazing knowledge about our property, making our awareness of the land we live on so much deeper and richer!”