Landscape Journal - Summer 2013

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Summer 2013

The Journal of the Landscape Institute

This issue: An in-depth look at the new GLVIA3 Neo Bankside

A tapestry of plants in the heart of London Beauty in dereliction

David George’s photographs of decaying infrastructure Living walls examined

Research and a revisit to assess biodiversity

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Landscape Summer 2013

Contents Summer 2013 Publisher Darkhorse Design and Advertising Ltd 42 Hamilton Square, Birkenhead Wirral, Merseyside. CH41 5BP T 0151 649 9669 www.darkhorsedesign.co.uk

Regulars

Editor Ruth Slavid landscape@darkhorsedesign.co.uk Managing director, Darkhorse Tim Coleman tim@darkhorsedesign.co.uk

Editorial 5

Design director Richard Sargent Production director Clare Moseley Senior artworker Mike Carney Editorial advisory panel Tim Waterman, honorary editor Edwin Knighton CMLI Jo Watkins PPLI Jenifer White CMLI John Stuart Murray FLI Ian Thompson CMLI Jill White CMLI Eleanor Trenfield Amanda McDermott Landscape Institute president Sue Illman PLI LI director of policy and communications Paul Lincoln Membership enquiries Charles Darwin House 12 Roger Street London WC1N 2JU T 020 7685 2651 Twitter @talklandscape www.landscapeinstitute.org

Subscribe to Landscape Keep up to date with the latest thinking and the most interesting schemes in the UK and overseas.

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Join the Landscape Institute Join the Landscape Institute and enjoy the benefits of an organisation devoted to the promotion of landscape architecture. Benefits include Landscape, our quarterly journal, and a fortnightly email news service with the latest Institute, professional and industry news, as well as the best jobs in the profession. Full details are on our website: www.landscapeinstitute.org Landscape is the official journal of the Landscape Institute, ISSN: 1742–2914 ©May 2013 Landscape Institute. Landscape is published four times a year by Darkhorse Design.

Cover Photo ©: — Andrew Bret Wallis

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The views expressed in this journal are those of the contributors and advertisers and not necessarily those of the Landscape Institute, Darkhorse or the Editorial Advisory Panel. While every effort has been made to check the accuracy and validity of the information given in this publication, neither the Institute nor the Publisher accept any responsibility for the subsequent use of this information, for any errors or omissions that it may contain, or for any misunderstandings arising from it.

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Landscape’s impact on infrastructure

Bigger picture 6

Features GLVIA3 18 An in-depth look at the importance of

LVIA and the changes in the new book 24 Interview with Dr Carys Swanwick

Pollen in close-up

Debate 9

The future of farming

News analysis 24 What impact will ash dieback

have on our landscape?

Technical 1 41 Research into living walls

Technical 2 46 How has the living wall at

Celebrating the human footprint 27 David George’s haunting photographs

of decaying infrastructure provide new insight into the landscape

London’s Westfield fared?

Practice 1 50 Latest developments in

masterplanning

Practice 2 54 How the landscape profession can

contribute to slum upgrading

Practice 3 60 Changes to the Code of Conduct

Knowledge

High concept 34 Gillespies’ designs for

Neo Bankside in London

62 Specifying stone

Culture 64 The Landscape Institute’s

forthcoming lecture series

A word...

66 Tim Waterman explores the

potential of crowdsourcing Landscape Summer 2013

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Landscape Summer 2013

Editorial

by Ruth Slavid Editor

Landscape’s impact on infrastructure

1 — Ruth Slavid.

The rapid growth in numbers of wind turbines is a major issue, although not the only one, with which landscape and visual impact assessments have to deal. The turbines have moved from being curiosities to having a frequency that impact on views both of land and sea. Solar farms are likely to follow their trajectory, although they will not dominate the horizon in the same way.

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O Photo ©: 1 — Agnese Sanvito

ne of the few bright points for the construction industry, which is still reporting dismal figures, is the government’s go ahead for the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset, announced in the middle of March. Another is the announcement of the route for the second, northern, part of the High Speed Two rail link. And in his budget, the chancellor pledged a further £3 billion a year of infrastructure investment.

If nobody is getting too excited about these, it is because the chancellor’s pledge was seen as insignificant, particularly as it was not ‘new’ money but being taken from other departments. And the other two projects have too long a time-scale to have much impact on employment prospects now.

It is not true of course to say that nobody is getting excited. Many people are very excited, chiefly about wanting to stop the projects. Debate about the expansion of Heathrow and/ or a new airport for the southeast is similarly incendiary. This is because you cannot have large infrastructure projects without having considerable environmental impact.

It is ironic then that infrastructure in general and power generation in particular is beginning to play such an important part again in our rural landscape, decades after the last evidence of industry has disappeared. There is a generation now that has never seen a working coal mine, that probably regards the odd well-grassed former slag heap as a geological anomaly.

Would the detractors of wind farms have felt as hostile if they were set among pitheads and belching steel works? We will never know. But the fact that our perceptions are always changing makes the process of assessment a tricky one, which needs to be carried out with the utmost rigour and professionalism.

The new edition of Guidelines for Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment, discussed from page 17 onwards, incorporates changes to legislation and increases in knowledge and best practice. But most importantly it places the professional skills and judgment of landscape professionals at the heart of the process. They may even find themselves arguing for interventions which some consider eyesores and which will become the treasured gems of the future.

For many landscape architects, dealing with the impact of proposed infrastructure developments will be a major part of their workload in the coming years. It is good to know that they have the best of tools to help them do it.

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Bigger picture

by Ruth Slavid

Natural wonder

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his fierce looking creature is not

a creature at all, but something

that you will see or at least be

aware of commonly throughout the summer. It is a scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of the pollen of a dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, magnified 5800 times and coloured.

It is the pollen that is contained in the dandelion clocks that spring up in neglected lawns and throughout the countryside.

Plants are among the tools with which landscape architects work and some have a more detailed understanding than others, but few are likely to go down to this detailed level. As for the fierce appearance, it may be more appropriate than it seems at first. Wikipedia warns that ‘Dandelion pollen may cause allergic reactions when eaten, or adverse skin reactions in sensitive individuals’. And after all, the name dandelion does derive from the French for ‘lion’s tooth’.

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Photo ©: 1 — Power & Syred

This micrograph is one of a vast range of images produced by PS Micrographs, which is a specialist science photo library specialising in SEM images of the natural world, ranging from spiders and mites, to rocks, blood cells and algae. Some of its images are at a scale where they are still recognisable; others, like this pollen, could be almost anything.

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1 — Dandelion pollen – magnification x 5800.

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Debate

How should our farmland grow?

Farmland is such a large proportion of our rural environment, that changes in farming practices have a major impact on the landscape. The pressures that exist of climate change and food shortage are not disputed, but the ways to tackle them are. We discuss the future of farming and what it will mean for the rural environment.

Gemma Mackenzie Deputy business editor at Farmers Weekly

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here is no doubt the landscape of

British agriculture is ever changing

– go back 60 years and most

fieldwork was done by hand, whereas nowadays hundreds of acres can be harvested in a matter of days, and driverless tractors and equipment are already being trialled. The next 60 years could see as many changes as the previous 60.

As I write (early March 2013), European ministers are busy debating reform of the Common Agricultural Policy– the policy behind European farm subsidies, which account for 40% of the EU budget, and the requirements farmers need to fulfil in order to receive these.

Proposals include a key ‘greening’ element, which would require farmers to commit to more environmental obligations including buffer strips and beetle banks etc.

In addition, a ‘three-cropping’ rule has been proposed which could result in farmers having to introduce different crops into their rotation.

For farmers, 2012 will go down in history as one of the worst years in living memory with extreme weather causing problems for all producers across the country.

In future they will have to adapt their businesses and prepare for more volatile weather, as seen in 2012. This could result in different crops being planted, fewer animals out grazing in certain areas where wet weather doesn’t permit them to be outside, and perhaps changes to waterways infrastructure to cope with future flooding risks.

and methods will need to be developed.

Public opinion will also be a key driver – as producers look to become more efficient, larger-scale farming units will need to be created. However, the agricultural industry needs to win the public over on this – opposition to the Nocton dairy and Foston pig units show there are many misconceptions about what these larger units will entail.

As the government strives to produce more electricity from renewable sources, we will begin to see more solar panels and wind turbines on British farms.

Surveys have shown that farmers are extremely interested in investing in renewable energy schemes, as the technology offers a steady income at a time when farm-gate prices are extremely volatile – the average pig producer hasn’t made an income since 2010.

However, like the emergence of large-scale units, public opposition could be a key issue to this as often the prospect of solar or wind farms causes upset among local communities.

Customer needs will also shape the future landscape of British farms – as producers are tasked with ‘producing more from less’, new and innovative farming techniques Landscape Summer 2013

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Debate cont.

With peak phosphorus almost upon us, conventional farmers may well be forced to look to sustainable methods

Sally Morgan Editor of Organic Farming magazine

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griculture has long had a role

in shaping the landscape.

Five thousand years ago,

much of England was covered in wild woodland but, by the time of the Domesday Book, only fragments remained.

Most had been converted to farmland. In fact, almost our entire landscape has been formed by agriculture – and farming will continue to have a pivotal role in the shape of our landscape.

A recent CPRE survey showed that four out of five British adults thought farmers had a responsibility to look after the landscape for future generations and wanted them to get more support to carry out environmentally sustainable farming practices. Very few wanted to see a more industrialised farming landscape with huge fields to accommodate ever-larger machinery or ‘mega-farms’ housing thousands of cattle or pigs.

If we look to the future, it is clear that climate change will have a huge impact.

The weather is expected to be increasingly unsettled and extreme with rising sea levels, 10

Landscape Summer 2013

periods of drought and exceptional rainfall.

The challenge facing agriculture is how to adapt to climate change while, at the same time, producing food sustainably.

Many commentators claim that, in a world where the population will rise to more than 9 billion people by 2050, agriculture must become ever more intensive. But, with the rising costs of oil, fertilisers and pesticides, intensive farming may not be sustainable in the long-term. A sustainable agro-ecological whole-system approach, such as organic farming, would combine ecology, economics and culture to give truly sustainable production and a healthy environment. Innovative schemes, such as the Duchy Originals Future Farming Programme delivered by the Soil Association, are already helping farmers develop fully sustainable farming methodologies.

Key to all agriculture is a healthy, fertile soil. Organic farming relies on rotations, clover leys, farmyard manures and green wastes to maintain levels of nutrients, while more intensive farming requires the use of inorganic fertilisers. Not only are the costs of inorganic fertilisers increasing, but the supply of phosphorus from mined phosphate rock is running out. Without an adequate supply of this key nutrient, arable yields soon fall. With ‘peak phosphorus’ almost upon us, conventional farmers may well be forced to look to sustainable

methods to maintain soil fertility.

In the future, farmers will also have to look very carefully at their choice of crop varieties. The choice won’t just be based on yield and disease-resistance, but on whether they can cope with changeable conditions – one month drought, the next deluge. In the southern counties, a longer growing season with fewer frosts may favour, for example, the growing of sunflowers, maize and melons, altering the summer landscape.

Agro-forestry is already on the increase, as farmers discover the benefits of trees in the landscape. Wood-pasture systems provide shelter for crops and livestock alike, and help to combat soil erosion by reducing water runoff. The careful choice of tree species will make it possible to take a harvest of fruits, nuts, oils, biomass, or even pharmaceuticals.

So what might the farm of the future look like? It will probably be very diverse, with arable crops alongside grass-fed livestock, novel mixes of annual and perennial crops, small woodlands, shelterbelts and orchards, wildlife areas and small-scale renewable energy schemes. These mixed systems make far better use of the available resources, are less risky than a monocultural approach, have a much lower carbon footprint and, best of all, seem to be what the public want – a win-win situation for everyone.

We could, if we chose, practise farming as if we really believed that its prime job was to produce good food

Colin Tudge Founders of the Campaign for Real Farming

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many as possible, but by the perceived need to ‘compete’ in the ‘global market’. As successive Secretaries of State have told us (Owen Paterson is the latest) farmers must raise crops and beasts not primarily for eating but to sell as profitably as possible, preferably overseas. So long as the oil flows, this means prairies and factories.

f we continue to farm as ‘the powers-that-be’ now advocate, the fields will be vast and uniform – emerald green grass with never a beast in sight, knee-high wheat, all bred to the last gene and steeped in industrial chemistry.

There will be giant sheds – each with 30,000 dairy cattle or a million pigs or poultry: literally, for such units already exist.

Yet we could, if we chose, practise farming as if we really believed that its prime job was to produce good food – and to do so in ways that provide good jobs; in ways that do not simply treat the countryside as real estate, on sale to the highest bidders; that do not require animals to be permanently incarcerated; and do not wipe out our fellow creatures.

There will be some token greening – wide(ish) field margins for the specialist species that find such spaces acceptable; the odd wood for ‘eco-services’ or ‘amenity’ – a ‘country park’ or pheasant shooting; and the odd demonstration farm, with Ayrshires, Gloucester Old Spots, and the occasional Wyandotte, but strictly for show.

We could practice what has been called ‘enlightened agriculture’. Ten thousand years of experience; many millions (literally) of examples from all around the present world; and a growing body of excellent but non-commercial (and therefore largely side-lined) science tell us that the best way to do this is with farms that are polycultural (mixed; with genetically heterogeneous varieties and breeds); tightly integrated (the farm as an ecosystem); and low-input (as nearly organic as possible). The whole should be an extended exercise in agro-forestry – farming and trees in synergy. Such farms are complex and therefore must be skillsintensive (plenty of farmers) and so there is

Many of the nicer farm houses will remain but the countryside will be silent except for the drone of big machines.

This is what we will get – and of course are already getting – if agriculture continues to be driven, not by the desire to provide good food for everyone and good jobs for as

no advantage in scale-up (so they should generally be small to medium-sized).

To work well, such farms require excellent science – pest control without pesticides is much more subtle than a douche of industrial chemistry. But the countryside as a whole would look much as we all still imagine it should: small fields with wildflowers, and herds of recognizable cattle and sheep; pigs and chickens in woods (though this is a touch of ecological modernity); rotations of arable, pastoral, and horticultural; all very busy – not with giant machines but with real human beings practising ancient skills, up-dated with modern know-how and laboursaving technologies.

But the powers-that-be are committed to the status quo. Their excesses are undermining the whole world but they think that what they are doing is ‘realistic’ and that all alternatives are fantasy – although the truth is the other way around.

So if we give a damn, then we (all of us) have to take matters into our own hands.

To this end, a few years ago, I and a few collaborators began the Campaign for Real Farming (aka Enlightened Agriculture) – aiming towards a global ‘Agrarian Renaissance’. Please come to our website: www.campaignforrealfarming.org and join the crusade.

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News analysis

By Roger Kent, Alan Simson, Colin Moore, Annabel Downs

Ash to ash

1 — Winchester Hill, South Downs National Park, with areas which are predominantly ash hatched. In the worst case for ash dieback, all this could be lost.

The initial surge of public interest in ash dieback has temporarily waned during the dormant season for the trees and fungus. By this summer we will have a better grasp not only of the pathology of the disease but also of the potential impact of ash dieback on our landscapes. The visual loss could be devastating.

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Photo ©: 1 —Roger Kent

n February this year the Forestry

Commission confirmed the presence

of the ash dieback fungus Chalara fraxinea in 19 nursery sites, 189 recently planted sites and 170 established woodlands, affecting most counties throughout the UK. The spread of the fungus, currently usually shown as dots on a map, will probably soon need a bigger symbol.

The National Environmental Research Council’s Countryside Survey, an audit started in 1978 (in the wake of Dutch elm disease), produced its latest review of the distribution of ash trees in the countryside in November 2012, revised in 2013. This audit, which covers small woodlands, individual trees and linear occurrences coincided approximately with the arrival of C. fraxinea in the UK. It shows that in small woodlands (<0.5ha), ash is the second most abundant tree species, after oak, and that it is more abundant in England than Scotland or Wales.

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Outside woodlands there are estimated to be 2.2 million individual ash trees, with ash again the second most common species, although few of these are veteran trees.

There are just short of 100,000km of ash hedgerows and lines of ash trees, with the majority occurring in England. The National Forestry Inventory Commission’s preliminary estimates for broadleaf species in British woodlands larger than 0.5ha (produced in December 2012), indicates that there are 126 million ash trees in these British woodlands, making ash the third most prevalent broadleaf species. Ash accounts for approximately 14% of the total standing volume of broadleaf trees in the UK, with the majority in private woodlands.

These figures make it clear that ash plays a prominent role in the landscape in terms of commercial forestry. It has an equally significant role environmentally in carbon capture and in ecology and conservation (with additional interest in the prospect of wider eco-benefits gained from all that decaying timber). The sheer quantity of ash trees in the landscape and their location, mean that they also have a significant cultural and visual presence.

What the facts and figures don’t reveal is the existence of locally significant ash trees, including all those urban and suburban places where ash trees grow and are important to our daily lives: as street trees, in squares /...

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2 — An urban ash tree in Watford High Street.

3 — Ash trees in Denmark showing signs of damage.

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The fungus Chalara fraxinea is here to stay: we can neither eradicate it nor halt its progress.

We know that in Denmark it has spread very rapidly and affected approximately 95% of all the ash trees; in other areas where the fungus has long been present, the impact is far less; we do not yet know how swiftly it will run through UK or how many of our ash trees may prove resistant to the fungus.

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where their light foliage provides a visual connection between surrounding buildings and the square itself, in public parks and gardens, in private back gardens, along railway lines where it is coppiced and self seeding, and as the dominant canopy tree in bluebell woods in the Midlands. The list of locally significant ash trees is endless and the loss of these trees will leave enormous gaps in our everyday landscapes .

The LI through its biosecurity sub committee is collaborating with a group of Government departments, agents and other organisations (DEFRA, Forestry Commission, Natural England, National and Woodland Trusts, Tree Council, HTA, FERA, AA and others) 14

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It is one of a series of new or impending destructive diseases and pests to affect trees, plants and pockets in the UK. It is probable that these new pests arrived through a combination of factors, with imports of contaminated nursery stock and climate change repeatedly identified as the primary contributory factors.

Part of the work of the collaborative group will be to lobby for support and changing practices to minimise incoming diseases and pests, to find ways of making our existing flora and fauna more resilient, as well as promoting policies and strategies which facilitate replacement of ash trees lost as a result of C. fraxinea. Each of the participating organisations has different priorities and objectives. Broadly these can be categorised

as commercial, ecological, and culturalaesthetic; and although there will be conflicting priorities expressed, the LI biosecurity group will ensure that the cultural and aesthetic aspects of the broader landscape are included in all the thinking and solutions.

Where ash has been used to screen old or more recent developments as part of planning control, we need to consider how to ensure the commitment to maintain screening that lasts for the life of the building, highway or other major development, and not simply to gain planning consent. If a tree is described as being grown in the UK, we need to know if this is for its entire life and not just the last season. We need to know what are the best trees to plant now.

The landscape profession has the vision and methodologies to provide insight into the significant visual changes which will be brought about as a result of this disease.

We also aim to establish a photographic record of ash trees in the UK. The LI biosecurity group has its work cut out but it will keep you posted so we can all make the best decisions.

The authors are members of the LI biosecurity sub committee.

Photo ©: 2 — Alan Simson Photo ©: 3 — Erik Dahl Kjær

to share practical and technical information and advice and, using this information, the biosecurity group has prepared and updated specific guidance for landscape architects: see bit.ly/mXQMd9

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GLVIA 3

The publication of GLVIA, the third edition of Guidelines for Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment, is a significant moment for the landscape profession.

The following pages give an insight into the changes, and the story behind them.

Photo ©: 1 — WYG

By Ruth Slavid

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1 — Night-time view over the South Wales valley town of Rhymney, showing the contrast of urban lighting in the valley and the darkness of enclosing ridges.

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Feature GLVIA 3

M

ore than a decade after the second

edition of Guidelines for Landscape

and Visual Impact Assessment was

published, its successor has appeared.

‘Appeared’ however is not the right word, since it suggests a certain effortlessness, whereas the effort that went into this important book was considerable.

It involved not only the research and the writing, but extensive consultation both within and outside the Landscape Institute.

The work involved was certainly worth it, since GLVIA3 is a crucially important book, at the heart of what the Landscape Institute does. It is an approach that allows professionals to assess the effect that proposed developments will have on the landscape and on people’s visual appreciation of it. These assessments play a vital part in the planning process, offering some of the evidence that is needed in order for decision makers to be able to say yes or no to proposals or to ask for changes. This new guidance not only brings its predecessor up to date but offers a fresh approach, stressing the need for professional judgment and presentation by those doing the work, rather than setting out protocols that could in the worst instances be followed blindly without true understanding.

On the following pages we look in some detail at what the guidance says, including a quick beginners’ guide to LVIA. We also interview Carys Swanwick who had the important but challenging task of writing the report.

A book is by definition a finished thing, but this one has been written in a way that should ensure that it dates as slowly as possible. While it sets out to offer the best and most intelligent guidance, it will also be a jumping-off point for further discussion. The pieces in this issue of the journal should be seen as both a taster for the book itself, and a stimulus for that discussion.

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Understanding the Guidelines Landscape and visual impact assessments should focus on proportionality, transparency, professional judgement, clear communication and presentation.

The skills of landscape professionals will be paramount in carrying out this work.

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he third edition of Guidelines for Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment is one of the most significant publications with which the Landscape Institute has been associated for some years.

Jeff Stevenson, chair of the advisory panel for the book says, ‘We have to assess impacts properly and make sure that the outcomes of our assessments are better presented. We are trying to bring forward the role of the landscape professional, and are engaged in the process of helping decision makers make better decisions and be accountable for them.’

GLVIA3 aims to do this by building on the strengths of the two preceding editions, eschewing a tick-box approach and instead providing a framework within which landscape professionals can use their skills and judgment to make recommendations about projects.

Produced jointly by the Landscape Institute and IEMA (the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment), GLVIA3 has drawn on the experience and opinion of the advisory panel, of Carys Swanwick who wrote the third edition, as well as of a broad range of individuals and organizations who took part in the consultation process. These included LI members and registered practices and a wide range of statutory and non-statutory stakeholders.

It has been 11 years since GLVIA2 was published, and in her foreword LI president Sue Illman writes, ‘The new edition is comprehensive and clear, covering the many developments that have taken place in the scope and nature of impact assessment since publication of the second edition. There have been significant changes to the environmental framework within which LVIA is now undertaken, particularly with the UK Government’s ratification of the European Landscape Convention,

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confirming the importance and role of the landscape as used and enjoyed by all.’

With any publication such as this, where a pristine copy is likely to replace a well-thumbed version, the first thing anybody wants to know is, ‘What is different?’.

In this case there are a number of significant differences, which is why the LI issued advice to the profession, guiding members as to how to proceed during the transition to the publication of the new book in April.

Photo ©: 2 — Davee Hughes

The main change is one of approach. Carys Swanwick, who wrote the book, said, ‘The most important aspect to my mind has been the search for an appropriate balance between a very prescriptive approach, which encourages practitioners to treat the guidance as a recipe book from which standard solutions can be “cranked out”, and an approach that establishes a clear framework but allows the response to be tailored to the individual circumstances of each project.

‘This was a particularly difficult challenge when we tackled the matter of assessing the significance of landscape and visual effects. I am sure that there will be those who feel that we haven’t been prescriptive enough, and others who feel that we have been too prescriptive or that we have prescribed the wrong thing!’ /...

Produced by the Landscape Institute and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA).

Writer Carys Swanwick Publisher Routledge, priced £49.99 Sponsors English Heritage Scottish Natural Heritage Natural Resources Wales

Supporters Environment Agency Natural England Advisory panel Jeff Stevenson – chair Julian Francis Mary O’Connor Mark Turnbull Marc van Grieken

Join the conversation about GLVIA on Talking Landscape, the LI’s social network.

2 — Offshore windfarms pose different challenges to onshore ones, but of equal importance.

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Feature GLVIA 3

John Briggs, of Natural Resources Wales, said, ‘It won’t suit everybody. People will have to think more.

Some people are reassured by having a tried and tested method where the results just pop out. But it is difficult for landscape to be considered in that way.’

The book has been written to be as clear and easy to follow as possible, in sensible plain English. It emphasises the aspects that are essential to successful landscape and visual impact assessment: proportionality to ensure that relevant weight is given to the most important elements; transparency of professional judgement: to allow others to see how judgements have been reached and what reasoning has been applied by the assessor and communication and presentation, so that the people reading the assessment can actually understand what is being said.

The partnership with IEMA was vital to the success of the book, believes Swanwick. ‘I think the close working with IEMA helped to make sure that the guidance was in tune with evolving thinking about EIA processes more generally,’ she said. ‘For example this edition of the guidance devotes far more space to the difficult issue of cumulative-effects assessment’.

There is an entire chapter devoted to the topic. It is, says GLVIA3, ‘an evolving area of practice that is relevant to all forms of development and land use change. It is not appropriate to prescribe the approach to such assessment since the issues related to cumulative effects depend on the specific characteristics of both the development proposal and the location. The challenge is to keep the task reasonable and in proportion to the project under consideration. Common sense has a large part to play in reaching agreement about the scope of the assessment’.

It takes further the particular emphasis on the distinction between landscape effects and visual effects that was made in GLVIA2. It starts by giving a clear definition of the difference between the two, saying: ‘An assessment of landscape effects deals with the effects of change and development on landscape as a resource’, whereas, ‘An assessment of visual effects deals with the effects of change and development on the views available to people and their visual amenity’.

Because of the importance of this distinction, there are two separate chapters on these topics, setting them within an overall description of common processes.

This means that there is an unavoidable degree of repetition but this was felt to be a price worth paying for stressing the differences.

There are also changes in emphasis. Relative to its predecessor, GLVIA3 emphasises the need to build the assessment around a consistent framework of factors that need to be considered, rather than having a prescriptive description of different categories. This should help to ensure the clear judgement and transparency which it argues are vital.

It follows the guidance in environmental impact assessment regulations and the EC directive from which they are derived which requires the identification of ‘likely significant effects’ rather than any or all effects. GLVIA3 emphasises the importance of this, while recognising that many decision makers prefer a more subtle assessment which considers relative significance against a scale. /...

It explains the growing emphasis on green infrastructure, on developments in landscape character assessment and in seascape character assessment, in the widespread use of historic landscape characterisation and related tools and the new emphasis on ecosystem services.

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Photo ©: 3 — Julian Jones

These guiding principles have driven Swanwick’s work on the new edition, which of course contains changes both large and small. The first major change is to the introductory text, which brings the book up-to-date in terms of the changes in guidance and practice since 2002, including the introduction of the European Landscape Convention.

But what is LVIA?

For many landscape professionals, Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment forms a major element of their work. But others may scarcely come across it, either because it is not the type of work that their practice undertakes, or because it is the responsibility of others within the practice.

For example, Tim Waterman, honorary editor of Landscape, says, ‘Because of the broad nature of landscape architecture, many practitioners will rarely encounter LVIA, while others may be largely occupied with it. For largely the same reasons, universities approach the teaching of LVIA with different levels of concentration dependent upon the larger focus of their programmes.’

So what is it that the Landscape Institute is making such a fuss about? Why does it consider it so important? Anybody who is unsure would do well to read at least the first chapter of the book, which serves as an introduction, and in fact is intended to be of use to the non-professional involved in development as well as to landscape professionals.

It defines LVIA as ‘a tool used to identify and assess the significance of the effects of change resulting from developments in both the landscape as an environmental resource in its own right and on people’s views and visual amenity.’

LVIA may be carried out formally as part of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or informally as a contribution to the design process, and to appraisal of development proposals and planning applications. The broad principles and the core of the approach are the same in each case.

EIAs have been required formally for certain types of development since 1985. Stemming from a European directive, the requirements of EIA are translated into domestic law in each member state. With devolution in the UK, the devolved legislation is leading to subtle differences in each area. While the practitioner must be aware of these differences in legislation, the principles of LVIA will remain the same. EIAs cover a range of topics, which can be summarised as covering the impacts on — human beings, population — flora and fauna — soil, water, air, climate — landscape — cultural heritage (including architectural and archeological heritage) — material assets.

Within the context of an EIA, LVIA, which is of course just one of the tools that is used, deals with effects on the landscape itself and on people’s visual amenity, as an aspect of effects on human beings, and also with possible inter-relationships of these with other related topics.

Where no EIA is required for a development, planning authorities may still ask for an LVIA as part of the appraisal process of a proposed development. While there will be no rigid requirement to follow the defined terms of an EIA, the required approach is likely to be broadly similar and the differences between a formal LVIA and one used for an ‘appraisal’ are explained in the guidelines.

3 — Routing of electricity lines can be an important part of LVIA work.

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Feature GLVIA 3

In terms of communication, GLVIA3 stresses the importance of having a well-argued narrative text to make clear what the significant issues and effects are.

Tables and matrices, it says, should support this text rather than being relied upon to too great a degree.

used, it turned out not to be clear whether these case studies were simply examples (which was the intention) or whether they were intended to represent best practice. So GLVIA3 just uses examples to illustrate some of the points in the text.

It also emphasises that the work that is carried out in LVIA should be proportional to the scale and nature of the development that is proposed.

One particular concern was that these examples should cover a range of types of development. Over the past few years there has been an enormous amount of discussion of and controversy about wind farms. While their impact on the landscape can be considerable and important they are not the only issue with which LVIA has to deal. Care was therefore taken in the choice of illustrations to ensure that various forms of development were illustrated.

The new version expands the material in the previous edition on the overall presentation of LVIA. It attempts to be aligned with but not bound by other guidance (that is, it does not conflict but it does not follow slavishly).

Sometimes what is left out of a book is as important as what it contains. There are elements that were contained in GLVIA2 that have been omitted because it was thought that they could be misleading.

So the new book does not contain examples of judgements and assessments of significance because these were too frequently interpreted as offering prescriptive or definitive guidance rather than simply being examples. For similar reasons, no case studies have been included. This is because when GLVIA2 was

In order to remain topical, GLVIA3 deliberately seeks to avoid being bound by current statute and guidance.

To do so would lead to it rapidly becoming out of date.

Instead it encourages practitioners to make themselves aware of relevant guidance as it evolves and to keep themselves up to date.

Julian Francis, principal landscape architect with the Environment Agency, explained: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;An area Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been involved in as the IEMA representative on the GLVIA

THE PROCESS OF EIA AND LVIA

Scoping

Consultation

Establishing the baseline Identify and describe effects (assess if statutory EIA) Mitigation proposals Enhancement proposals (not required by EIA) Environmental Statement Report/LVIA Implement mitigation/ monitor effect

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Design development

Screening (statutory EIA)

review panel is my role in helping to ensure that there is agreement between both the IEMA and LI memberships over the content to produce a robust book that will be practical and will usefully serve both professions.

proposals, in micro-hydro and in tidal energy, as well as smaller-scale wind generation. It is important, she said, that the guidance has a focus on what will be significant ‘rather than just providing a load of information.

This should help focus on the germane points.’

‘We have striven throughout the production of this third edition to ensure that the lifetime of the guidance is not made foreseeably short lived by the introduction of specific aspects that could lead to the book becoming outdated early on during its service.’

The landscape in Scotland is becoming an increasingly emotive issue, especially in relation to wind turbines and questions of what comprises wild spaces.

‘GLVIA3 can provide a clear way of rationalizing various landscape elements and help tease out the issues,’ she said.

The Landscape Institute is aware that change starts to happen as soon as a document is completed (even before GLVIA3 was printed there was the publication of proposals that would lead to a completely new EIA Directive).

This is inevitable, and has been anticipated. The Landscape Insitute has set up a webpage devoted to GLVIA at bit.ly/wWLvGS and also is encouraging discussion on Talking Landscape. In this way practitioners will be able to share knowledge of best practice.

WHAT NEXT FOR GLVIA? As well as omitting items that will date GLVIA3, and ensuring that there is a forum for discussion, the book aims as far as possible to be able to deal with the changes that will arise in the future.

‘We have tried to anticipate what the profession’s needs will be as questions arise in the future,’ said Jeff Stevenson. ‘I think there will be more accountability in decision making. That means that decision makers will have to have an appropriate corpus of information possible. Landscape and visual resources are increasingly understood to be at the core of people’s lives and well-being. The third edition also provides a reminder to the landscape professional to recall what is said in the Royal Charter. Landscape professionals have responsibilities to the character and quality of the environment. We should seek to manage change in the landscape for the benefit of both this and future generations and we should seek to enhance the diversity of the natural environment, to enrich the human environment and to improve them in a sustainable manner. GLVIA3 has a part to play in this process.’

Just as wind farms have come to dominate concerns about the landscape, so solar farms are likely to have an increasing impact. Laura Campbell at Scottish Natural Heritage also expects growth in coastal energy

Chris Bolton of Natural England also believes that LVIA may come to be applied to smaller developments in addition to the larger ones. ‘It may be that the guidelines will be applied more locally to such developments,’ he says. ‘It will help to nuance them.’

He also thinks it is vital that there is more awareness beyond the landscape profession of what LVIA consists of. ‘There should be more understanding and awareness,’ he said, ‘among local authority planners in particular.’

For Peter Herring at English Heritage, the new edition represents an opportunity to raise awareness of the historic landscape. ‘English Heritage welcomed the LI’s proposals for a new third edition of the GLVIA as it provided an opportunity to include more on the historic environment, on land and at sea, and better links with the cultural sections in EIAs, and in particular reference to historic landscape characterisation,’ he said.

‘The cultural dimension of landscape extends well beyond simply the tangible aspects of how it has been shaped in the past and today. Even in areas viewed by many as being “wild” or as showing little obvious evidence for human intervention, it is also about how we view, understand and respond to landscape, intangible themes which themselves have a clear historical development and which have always driven our actions, whether consciously or not, and still do.’

Every organisation sees the development of landscape and the challenges in a different way. We cannot deny that there will be a variety of pressures for change, with a growing population and diminishing resources. All over the UK organisations will have to make decisions about the landscape and visual impacts of proposed developments, will have to decide if they are acceptable, unacceptable or can be mitigated. The first two editions of GLVIA have played an important role in this process.

The publication of GLVIA3 is another step forward.

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Feature GLVIA 3

Writing the guidelines It is hard to imagine anyone better equipped to write the GLVA3 book than Carys Swanwick, who has a background in both practice and academia and experience of wrestling with complex guidance projects.

recently her involvement with the Foresight Land Use Futures project where she was a member of the Lead Expert Group. This, she says, was ‘interesting but extremely challenging. There were great debates among the team about the critical issue of balancing the requirements for new housing and the need to protect the environment, including landscape.

‘It anticipated to a large degree the subsequent debate about the introduction of the NPPF [National Planning Policy Framework] and what I am most proud about is that those of us on the group with environmental interests stood up as robustly as we could to some of the more extreme arguments, primarily from economists, about the desirability of letting market forces have their way.’

Complex documentation and more complex negotiations are no strangers to Swanwick, and one could almost see her life and career as the ideal training for producing GLVIA3. She has been involved with landscape all her life, although she is not a landscape architect.

4

C

arys Swanwick had a well-earned holiday

after the completion of GLVIA3. The end

result is one with which all parties are

delighted but getting there was, as expected, a complex task that required detailed negotiations.

It was a project that Swanwick’s experiences had led her to see was important. ‘My interest was partly because I teach LVIA to students and have views on the difficulty of explaining what can be a difficult and potentially dry subject,’ she said.

By training she is a biologist who then took a masters in ecological conservation. ‘I was born on a farm and spent much of my childhood in rural landscapes,’ she explains. ‘I loved the outdoors and was a fanatical bird watcher when I was young. My masters gave me an understanding of large-scale landscapes and of the land use pressures that influence them. For example, my dissertation was on the conservation of chalk grassland in Dorset – a vital feature of the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. In those days I probably wasn’t that aware of what landscape was but came to understand it more and more as I moved on into work with Land Use Consultants.’

‘I also realised, from meeting graduates who had gone on to work in this area, that it can be difficult to develop the knowledge and skills on the job and that the guidance therefore plays an important role for those setting out in this area. I thought there was room for the current guidance to be updated, expanded in some areas and clarified in others and I thought my experience in writing guidance might be useful to the advisory panel.’

She worked there for 23 years, broadening her interest from an initial focus on ecology and conservation to a much broader interest in landscape and environmental planning. By the end of her time she was a director.

At the same time, Swanwick had met academics through the Landscape Research Group and had done some training for the Countryside Agency. She welcomed the possibility of combining her interests and experience, initially of doing some tutoring at Sheffield, although in the end circumstances prevented this. When the opportunity arose to apply to be professor and head of department, she took it.

This guidance writing included being lead author on the ‘Landscape Character Assessment – Guidance for England and Scotland’ published in 2002, and more

When she was offered the job, ‘I actually took several months to make a decision as it was a real personal and professional wrench to leave LUC,’ Swanwick

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Landscape Summer 2013

4 — Carys Swanwick.

says. ‘I was also warned off academic life by a few people but in the end I decided to accept. There were the usual ups and downs along the way but I have never regretted the decision and found university life very rewarding and enjoyable, especially in watching students grow up and emerge into the profession.’

This was in 1995 and she held the post for 10 years, during which time, says the university’s website, ‘the department thrived under her strong leadership’. Only now is she in the process of retiring from the university, a step that she expected to take earlier and that would certainly have made the task of writing GLVIA3 considerably easier.

Photo ©: 4 — Helen Morris

Swanwick has certainly not been buried in academe. The same website refers to her ‘mammoth contribution’ beyond the university and outside it. She has for instance taken part in landscape character assessment work in the Barnsley area and around York. Her time at Sheffield has evidently been happy and fulfilling. She has enjoyed the landscape of the Eastern Moors of the Peak District which are readily accessible from the western edge of the city where she has lived. She will be leaving this behind, but certainly not a working life.

Having finished GLVIA and had a holiday in Barbados to recover, Swanwick is raring to go. She has already become a member of the National Trust’s Board of Trustees which she describes as ‘very interesting and exciting and likely to be quite time consuming’. She has also agreed to work one day a week for energy and environmental consultancy SLR in Nottingham. She is also on the panel for the Research Excellence Framework which means that next year she will be reviewing the quality of research in built environment, planning and landscape.

As she says, ‘I have plenty to keep me busy at the moment, on top of looking after our large garden and supporting Leicester Tigers!’

Publications Books (including chapters) Swanwick, C (2006) The Role of Landscape Character Assessment in ‘Farming, Forestry and the National Heritage — Towards a more Integrated Future’. Davison, R. and Galbraith, C. (Eds) The Stationery Office. Edinburgh.

Swanwick, C. (2003) The Assessment of Countryside and Landscape Character in England : An Overview. In “From Global to Local: Developing Comprehensive Approaches To Countryside and Nature Conservation”. Eds. Bishop, K. and Phillips, A. Earthscan, London.

Swanwick, C and Land Use Consultants (2002) Landscape Character Assessment — Guidance for England and Scotland CAX 84. Countryside Agency, Cheltenham and Scottish Natural Heritage, Edinburgh. 84p.

Dunnett, N, Swanwick. C. and Woolley, H (2002) Improving Urban Parks, Play Areas and Green Spaces. DTLR. London. 214p.

Haines-Young, R. and Swanwick, C. (2000) Countryside Survey 2000 — Scoping Report. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. 94p.

Swanwick, C. (1997). Landscape Assessment of Freshwaters. In ‘Freshwater Quality: Defining the Indefinable’. Boon, P. J. and Howard, D.L. The Stationery Office, Edinburgh.

Swanwick, C et al (1999) Landscape Character Assessment – Interim Guidance for England and Scotland.

Land Use Consultants for Countryside Commission and Scottish Natural Heritage. 112p.

Published Reports

Swanwick, C. and Stedman, N. (1998) Countryside Character. Volume 3 : Yorkshire and the Humber. Countryside Commission. CCP 537. 143p.

Swanwick, C., Cole, L. and Lovett, A. (2006) Future Landscapes — The Future Character and Function of England’s Landscapes. Report for the Countryside Agency.

Swanwick, C., Selman, P., and Knight, M., (2006) A Statement on Natural Beauty.

CCW Research Report No.06/12.

Swanwick,C. (2003) Landscape Character Assessment Guidance. Topic Paper 6.

Techniques and Criteria for Judging Sensitivity and Capacity. Countryside Agency, Cheltenham and Scottish Natural Heritage, Edinburgh. 15p.

Swanwick, C. and Cole, L. (1996).

Conservation Issues in Local Plans. Land Use Consultants for English Heritage, English Nature and the Countryside Commission. 83p.

Swanwick, C. and Dunn, R. (1996) Countryside Survey 1990 — Policy Review. Department of the Environment.

Volume 9 of the Countryside Survey 1990 Series. 107p.

Swanwick,C. (2002) Landscape Character Assessment Guidance. Topic Paper 1. Recent Practice and the Evolution of Landscape Character Assessment.

Countryside Agency, Cheltenham and Scottish Natural Heritage, Edinburgh. 9p.

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Landscape Summer 2013

Photos Š: â&#x20AC;&#x201D; David George

Celebrating the human footprint Photographs of the decaying infrastructure of the last generation of power production open our eyes to the beauty of landscapes that might otherwise be dismissed simply as ugly or degraded.

By Ruth Slavid | Photography by David George

Landscape Summer 2013

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Feature Celebrating the human footprint

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Landscape Summer 2013

T

he photographs on the following pages are from

a series by David George called ‘Enclosures,

Badlands and Borders’. We felt it was appropriate

to publish them in the issue where we discuss the new GLVIA book because these photos focus on the types of interventions which, if they were proposed now, would probably be deemed unacceptable in an assessment, at least without severe mitigation.

But for George they are a cause for celebration and he has used them to create romantic and haunting images. He has written: ‘These photographs examine the existence of “The Sublime” in the western postindustrial landscape. They explore how these terrains posses a physical and intellectual exclusivity for a general observer and how they, due to the nature of the industries that create and maintain them, have a built-in obsolescence ... In the foreseeable future most of these places will no longer exist in their present form, due to shifts in global economies, changing labour forces, a “greener” awareness in society and the emergence of new technologies in industry. This may be one of the few intentional records that documents not only their existence, but also the strange uniqueness of these disappearing environments.’

George’s work has been described as ‘more psychogeographic than geographic’. He has had a long-standing interest in the representation of manaltered landscapes and in the work produced by the new topographic school in America, including Edward Ruscha’s ‘Twenty-six Gasoline Stations“’(1962), the work of Henry Wessel and the Bechers, and subsequently the work of Joel Sternfeld and J. Bennet Fitts. His own approach he says is different but ‘I hope the images I have produced will have the same critical eye and sense of objectivity as these earlier works whilst containing other layers of meaning that are both personal, political and to a degree anthropological.’

This work can be seen simultaneously a record of a vanishing time, a criticism of an insensitive approach and a celebration of beauty in a place where we do not expect to find it. More than anything, they are really beautiful photographs, which is why we are delighted to share them with you here.

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Feature Celebrating the human footprint

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Feature Celebrating the human footprint

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High concept Gillespies’ design for the landscape at NEO Bankside in central London has an ambition that is virtually unrestricted by budget. But the scheme, which has picked up several awards, also has lessons for more modest endeavours.

Photos ©: — Gillespies / Jason Gairn

By Ruth Slavid

/...

1

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Landscape Summer 2013

1 — The landscape has been designed to look good from the upper storeys of the apartment blocks.

T

here is an immense concentration of input in

a tiny space in the landscape at NEO Bankside

– a lot of ideas, a lot of materials, a lot of

planting and, more than anything, a lot of money. Gillespies designed the landscape as the setting for Native Land and Grosvenor’s upmarket housing development with architect Rogers Stirk Harbour. Not only did it have to create an appropriate setting for the apartments: it also needed to provide routes through to its neighbour Tate Modern, one of London’s top tourist attractions.

The landscape is certainly attractive. It is green even in the middle of winter; it is rich and graphic and dynamic and looks good both from ground level and from the flats above. But since nobody but the developer of another fancy housing scheme will ever be able to afford to replicate it, does it have any relevance beyond its own existence?

Stephen Richards, partner in charge of the project at Gillespies, believes that it does. ‘There is a rigour to the planning that we can certainly use in other projects that have that aspiration,’ he said. ‘And we have learnt about certain associations of planting that we want to take through to other projects.’

In many ways this is a text-book example of how a landscape architect’s involvement should work.

Gillespies was appointed very early, and so was involved from the beginning – a collaboration that was assisted by the fact that it had worked with the architect before at One Hyde Park and even on Rogers Stirk Harbour director Graham Stirk’s own house.

‘We became involved pre-concept,’ explained Richards. ‘RSH approached Native Land to say we need a landscape architect.’ The planning /...

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35

Feature High concept

Castle Yard

authority, Southwark, stated that any development needed to facilitate public movement. Once the last block is complete, two routes will lead directly from Southwark Street, a major access road from public transport, to Tate Modern. ‘We had long discussions with Native Land,’ Richards said, ‘about the fact that we wanted to use the landscape to define the edges.’

It was a bold step by the developer to dispense with any gates or security beyond the receptions to the individual blocks.

Block A

Tate Modern nd lla Ho re St

Block B

et

Service Yard

Block C

The through routes are very definitely through ways.

This is an ambiguous definition of space, in that it is private space which the public is free to use – but where it is not invited to linger. There are certainly no public benches or litter bins. ‘We saw it as a place to encourage you on a journey through,’ Richards said. The planting discourages most opportunities to stray off the path although when I went through it on a quiet day in the middle of winter, a security guard was keen to be helpful when I ‘accidentally’ strayed off the main path. He was scrupulously polite, but the implication was clear; if I didn’t stick to the main path I must be either lost or trespassing.

Alms Houses

tre rS e n m Su

et

Block D

Block E

So uth wa rk S tre e

t

2

3

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Landscape Summer 2013

4

5

But the contribution should not be dismissed because of this. A permeable space is far more appealing than a fortress, and the design offers a level of interest that is not available nearby. It fits with the concept of the Bankside Urban Forest, a strategy that architect Witherford Watson Mann drew up for Southwark.

The word ‘forest’ is really a romantic one. The aspiration is to green the area, and to do so in an interesting manner. While there are specific projects within the forest strategy, the overall aspiration to achieve a network of green spaces is evidently served by projects such as NEO Bankside.

Creating the landscape would have been far more difficult if it had had to surround a monolithic urban block. But RSH always knew that it wanted a number of pavilions in the landscape, and it worked alongside Gillespies to create a rhythm of different height blocks that had the best orientations for environmental performance and for views, and that could also form the edges of the through routes.

The amount of money that has been spent would obviously not be justified purely on the basis of public good. It also needed to serve the needs of the residents. What do people who pay several million pounds for a flat in the heart of the capital

6

want? Certainly not a vision of rus in urbe, since they probably own a bit of real countryside, either elsewhere in the UK or overseas. This is not the place for a bit of artless planting and some charming dilapidation.

But do they care at all? One of the selling points of the apartments is that they come with ‘winter gardens’, effectively large rooms with big windows which both modulate the environment and provide a sun-space in mid-season. I would have expected that residents would lead rather hermetic lives, relishing their position in the heart of London, but once at home either concentrating on their own concerns or gazing out over the skyline.

2 — Site plan, showing the way that the positioning of the blocks define the through routes.

3 — Early sketches showing the raised rows of trees.

4 — Planting has been designed to provide colour and interest throughout the year.

5 — Attracting insects was a consideration when choosing plants.

6 — Fractured paving and deliberately mannered planting provide a slightly oriental feel.

Richards says however that it is not like that. ‘When I visited as people were moving in last summer,’ he said, ‘there were residents sitting and reading in the garden. They said it was an oasis, that they enjoyed a sense of connection with a lush landscape.’ The way that the development is marketed has also evolved as the client has come to realise the draw that the landscape offers. ‘Initially it was all about being near to the Thames,’ Richard says. ‘But now there is a more of a sense of being part of a rich garden.’ /...

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Feature High concept

7

8

The Thames is not far away, just the other side of Tate Modern, but only visible from the upper floors.

At ground level one’s impression is of the bulk of Tate Modern and, from Southwark Street, of a tough albeit interesting urban environment. Allies & Morrison’s Blue Fin Building is one of the near neighbours to NEO Bankside, pierced by through routes – a permeability which Southwark considers crucial and which NEO Bankside has not only emulated but exceeded. ‘The planners scrutinised how the landscape design was developing,’ said Richards.

‘It was quite pressurised.’

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Landscape Summer 2013

The way that the trees are planted shows how Gillespies has used a mix of design flair and practical sense. The trees are in strips, providing both barriers alongside the paths and having the optimal planting conditions. ‘It is better to plant in strips than in tree pits,’ said Richards. ‘Few of the trees that we plant in this country have tap roots. Instead they need room for their roots to spread out.’ The soil depth is 1.5m, allowing plenty of space for a root zone that is typically 750mm.

Tate Modern is just opposite the new development (and its extension will bring it even nearer). It hides Dieter Kienast’s plantation of silver birch trees, which is set between the museum and the river.

NEO Bankside also uses trees more than one would expect. ‘We looked at a similar idea of dense tree planting to Kienast’s,’ said Richards. ‘But we said we can afford to use planting more.’ Nevertheless, oaks shield the listed almshouses that are to one side of the development, and elsewhere there are trees with relatively light foliage – birch and aspens.

The strips are raised to allow a greater planting depth. As is usual with such projects, there is an underground car park across the whole site. Digging basements is expensive, and the deeper they are the more costly. Even on a project like NEO Bankside the budgets are not limitless – particularly not for elements like excavation which will not add value to the project. By raising the rows of trees, there was no need to deepen the basement. The raised strips add visual interest. Without thinking hard, visitors are unlikely to realise why the change of level exists, but at some level the fact that there is a reason for it prevents it seeming arbitrary.

Initially the client was unsure about having trees close to the widows of apartments. It felt that potential residents would feel closed in. ‘We showed them that the filtered view through the foliage is desirable,’ Richards said. ‘We did thin out some of the trees near the windows.’

Paving is predominantly with granite. Richards is aware that the use of materials and design has to be in harmony with the design approach of the architect on the buildings. The NEO Bankside buildings are sharp and crisp, and Richards wanted a similar effect with the paving. One would expect to see natural stone

rather than reconstituted or a concrete product on a project of this prestige, but Richards believes that it also performs better in ways that one might not expect.

‘You can cut it much more crisply than concrete,’ he said. ‘You get much sharper joints and arrises.’

On the edges of the site, where the project has provided new public paving, the colour is relatively dark to be in keeping with Southwark’s standard palette. But towards the centre, on the paths through, it becomes lighter. This also allows it to reflect the light, which is a quality that Richards thinks enhances the appearance.

Another advantage of granite is that chewing gum doesn’t soak in. This means that it can be frozen off without leaving a stain. For a high-quality development which may see a lot of footfall this is an important consideration.

The paving is somewhat ‘disaggregated’ with elements breaking away from the central path and creating interesting patterns, particularly from above.

This is an important consideration, since the views of those looking down need to be enjoyable, as well as those wandering among the plants. Planting has been designed to be interesting all year round. In addition to the plentiful winter foliage, there are plants designed to bring colour changes throughout the summer.

9

Biodiversity is another consideration. There are bat boxes and beehives, the latter managed by the London Beekeepers Association. And the design is intended to encourage insect life. ‘There is a sink of good stuff, of plant material and habitats,’ Richards said. ‘It’s about providing some shade and spaces for insects to be.’

10

7 — Stone for paths is cut sharply to echo the precision of the architecture.

8 — The dense planting will need to be thinned out in future.

9 — By putting the trees in raised strips, Gillespies minimised the need for excavation.

10 — Bat boxes are among the environmental measures.

The other environmental aspect to the approach is the strategy for rainwater harvesting. This is becoming standard now, but here the approach is more sophisticated than most. Gillespies worked with engineer Hoare Lea on a scheme that made rainwater harvesting central to the basement design and construction. Water retention boards (reservoirs) were laid over the structural slab to provide a reserve of water to maintain soil saturation and consequently limit the amount of irrigation water required.

In many of its projects, Gillespies carries out its own planting design, but at NEO Bankside it felt that the demands were so complex that, after producing an initial outline, it worked with specialist Growth /...

Landscape Summer 2013

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Feature High concept

Industry to test and develop it. ‘We felt we needed that,’ said Richards. ‘The landscape needed to do so much.’

In stark contrast to many municipal schemes there is an absolute commitment to maintenance. Already, as is normal on a scheme of this kind, there have been plants that have not thrived and will have to be replaced. Longer term the scheme will need thinning out – first for shrubs and perennials and then of trees.

‘I have taken horticulturalists to see it, and they have commented “what a lot of plants”,’ Richards said.

The point of course is that a landscape like this may change over time, but it cannot be allowed to evolve from a simple level. It has to be exciting from the start.

Some of that excitement comes from the deliberately slightly mannered approach. Yes, there are foxgloves and geraniums in the summer. There is also an apple orchard and a herb garden, which residents are free to exploit. But there is a slightly oriental feel as well (Richards shies away from the use of the word Japanese since none of that garden philosophy has been applied) with the geometric arrangement of plants, cloud pruning of pines, and the fractured pattern of paving.

It is surprising that such a harmonious effect can be created with so many elements. About the only one that is missing is water. Richards says this was a deliberate omission because the Thames is so near.

Also water may just be too attractive – heaven forbid if some passer-by were driven to paddle, or just stand entranced for too long.

There is a fine balance between satisfying the residents and not drawing in the public. There are deliberately private areas where Richards is confident that the public will just feel too embarrassed to trespass – and if they do then the polite but insistent security staff should sort them out. But where he does believe that the landscape will act as an attractor is to the retail units. And as the trees mature, the lower apartments, that look out on the canopy, may prove to be just as popular as the upper ones that survey the changing skyline of London.

11

Neo Bankside key information Location: Hopton Street, London, SE1 Landscape architect: Gillespies Gillespies landscape design team leader: Stephen Richards Specialist planting consultant: Growth Industry Developers: Native Land and Grosvenor Architect: Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) Main contractor: Carillion Landscape contractor: Frosts Landscape Construction Engineer: Hoare Lea Completion: 2012

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Landscape Summer 2013

11 — Trees with light foliage have been planted in front of the lower windows.

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Landscape Summer 2013

DESIGNING EVERY JOURNEY

Technical 1

By Fiona McWilliam

Understanding living walls

1 —The living wall at Edgware Road station, London is intended to mitigate the effects of air pollution.

Research at Sheffield University aims to produce hard facts about the best ways to design living walls, and to assess what benefits they can offer.

S

Photo ©: TfL

een by many as embodying the

on trend concept of ‘urban

ruralism’, living walls loom large

in the imagination of developers and designers, and many of the environmentally aware general public, as a perfect way of literally ‘greening’ the built environment, by increasing biodiversity, improving air quality and mitigating traffic pollution.

1

More cynically, many architects and would-be developers see green walls as a means of boosting a project’s BREEAM credentials in the quest for planning permission.

comprising London’s first living wall, at the publicly funded Paradise Park Children’s Centre in Islington. This welldocumented disaster was attributed to a broken watering system.

contractors’ extravagant claims regarding the environmental benefits their systems can deliver. They are also perceived by many as expensive and difficult to maintain.

But just how sustainable vegetated walls and screens really are is a subject for heated debate, particularly given the failures of a number of high-profile examples. Most infamous has to be the 2009 death of the hundreds of plants

While still a relatively new phenomenon in the UK (certainly when compared with living roofs) the seemingly wide variety of living wall systems on the market is bewildering for specifiers, a situation exacerbated by manufacturers’ and

A research programme now under way at the University of Sheffield will, for the first time, provide much-needed technical data on the performance of vegetated/living/ green walls. /...

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Technical 1 cont.

Studies have shown that covering the surfaces of buildings in urban environments with green plants results in an improvement in air quality

‘Studies have shown that covering the surfaces of buildings in urban environments with green plants results in an improvement in air quality, aesthetics and wellbeing,’ says principal investigator Dr Hasim Altan from the university’s school of architecture. ‘However, most of these studies took place in climates significantly warmer than the UK. Our study will find out how living walls fare in the UK’s weather and how they can be of most benefit in this country.’

It is important to investigate factors that could affect the success and the environmental performance of living wall systems, Altan says, in order to establish practice guidelines. ‘It will encourage people to choose effective ways of incorporating this new concept into practical building design and optimise the benefits.’

The study is being carried out in collaboration with a living roof and wall contractor Scotscape and is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Altan describes it as ‘the first bridge between the rapidly growing “green wall” industry and academic knowledge’.

It will quantify the long-term effects of living wall systems in the UK climate over all four seasons, says Altan, who as well as lecturing in sustainable environmental 44

Landscape Summer 2013

internal and external air temperatures are being recorded for a year, until autumn 2013. The first six month’s data will be processed and published this summer.

2

design is director of the BEAU (Buildings Environments Analysis Unit) Research Centre and SaBRE, a joint venture between the university and the Building Research Establishment.

He and his team have installed test beds of three different types of living wall systems (container-based, compostbased and hydroponic) and two types of climber-covered screens on the southwest wall of the George Porter Building at the university’s North Campus. One soil module contains the ivy Hedera Helix Green Wonder, while the other has been planted with the black grass Ophiopogon.

The thermal data within each system, wall surface temperatures behind them and the

Detailed analysis will then be carried out to look at how the systems have functioned differently ‘in relation to variation and climatic conditions’. The observational data will also help to validate computer simulation results, enabling the researchers to clarify the benefits of vegetated walls in improving a building’s energy performance and the indoor thermal comfort of its occupants.

As the initially high installation cost of living walls is ‘the major disadvantage of promoting the practice’, Altan explains, ‘it is vital to clarify the benefits for investments’. The Sheffield study will, he says, ‘provide the knowledge of quantifiable data that will help businesses and individuals make informed decisions and choices when they consider building specifications’.

The study is also looking at the consumption of irrigation water required for each system. ‘There have been concerns regarding the maintenance and environmental costs of keeping living walls thriving, especially the requirements for mains water,’ Altan says. ‘The monitoring will provide a good indication as to which system is most efficient and possible ideas for future improvements.’

2 — Dr Hasim Altan.

3 — Monitoring equipment measure surface temperatures and air temperatures.

4 — The test beds are on the southwest wall of a university building. There are three planting modules and two climber-covered screens.

This is not the only research that is taking place. The charity Buglife is assessing the benefits of living walls in terms of providing habitats for essential invertebrate life, birds and bees, and is undertaking quarterly analytical assessments to monitor the rich variety of ‘birds, bugs and bees’ which gravitate to areas of biodiversity in urban areas.

And Juri Yoshimi, a PhD student and Altan’s research assistant, is undertaking research in parallel to the living walls project, exploring green walls and their thermal effects, using a long-term monitoring and simulation study.

Photos ©: —University of Sheffield

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Technical 2

By Alexandra Steed and Warren Osborne

Return to Westfield AECOM has carried out extensive research, three years after the completion of a substantial living wall, to see how it has fared. The research highlights an inherent conflict between a wish for biodiversity and aesthetic appeal.

a summary of ‘lessons learned’ — what worked and what could be improved upon in future living wall projects.

About the wall

O

ne of Europe’s longest green

walls is located at the Westfield

Shopping Centre in west

London. Designed by EDAW /AECOM, this 170m long, 4.5 metre high, living wall feature has, for the last three years, provided a visually striking landmark that stands between a retail mall and local homes. In addition to providing an attractive, green feature from both sides, the original design intent for the wall was to improve local biodiversity.

The living wall incorporates a modular system constructed from plastic panels.

The system is essentially a tray system turned on its side, with plants growing in a soil medium composed specifically for the plant species contained. The plants providing a total of 1275 m2 of primarily native woodland mix to the north side and sun-loving plants to the south side are watered from the top down by a weep hose irrigation-type system.

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1

But this article isn’t meant to bore with the details of the design. Following a brief description of the wall, we will focus on whether or not the design has fulfilled its objectives, three years on. Living walls are still a pioneering technology, and much is to be learned through trial and error. This article considers the success of the Westfield London living wall in terms of the original design intent. It is based on site visits conducted over the last three years, interviews with people involved in its care and maintenance, and by observations made by ecologist Dr. Martina Girvana. It concludes with

AECOM explored a number of living wall systems and selected a simple plastic modular system for two important reasons: plants could be grown offsite, thereby producing a mature effect from day one; and, panels could be easily repaired or replaced if necessary.

The modular system was developed

by Canadian firm ELT. Each panel is 500mm high by 500mm wide and 65mm deep, subdivided into 45 cells for soil containment. To secure the panels and provide fixing locations, a steel A-frame was constructed along the entire 400m length.

The plant palette was composed primarily of native species, a woodland mix on the north side, and sun-loving plants on the south side. However, at implementation, a decision was taken by the contractor to swap a number of natives for ornamentals due to availability. Originally a proportion of non-natives were included to provide splashes of seasonal colour, texture and form. Nine plant mixes were developed in swathes along the length of the wall to maximise year-round interest, with each panel inter-planted with up to five different species.

1 — The south side has received less maintenance than the north.

2 — The green wall provides a backdrop to the centre that pleases staff and visitors.

3 — Plants on the north-facing side have been well-maintained.

4 — The design incorporates a variety of colours.

5 — The wall under construction.

2

A top-down weep hose drip system irrigates the wall about 150 times a year, with a flow rate of 3 litres/m2/cycle. It is a largely automated system with sensors in the substrate that send text messages to a maintenance company if the wall becomes dry or if a fault is apparent. Liquid feed is applied through the irrigation system twice a year.

What we learnt

Photos ©: — AECOM

Since the completion date, over three years ago, the team has visited the living wall a number of times, collected comments from the client and staff of Westfield London, and conducted interviews with maintenance staff and suppliers. Importantly, we also had a vegetative survey and invertebrate appraisal completed by AECOM ecologist Dr. Martina Girvan. She included a comparison of the species assemblage described as conceptual stage versus implementation stage and the maintenance stage; what persists, what was added, and which species had colonised.

The surveys provide a snapshot only, recording incidental sightings rather than providing a systematic survey.

AECOM site visits and Westfield staff reports confirm that the north-facing wall, visible from the retail mall, has remained green, with fortnightly maintenance, and is enjoyed by customers and staff alike. /...

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Technical 2 cont.

6 — The south-facing wall has had poorer maintenance but the result is greater biodiversity.

7 — The simple system from which the wall was built up.

The wall’s south side, facing the residential area, has suffered from access issues, less frequent maintenance and greater sun exposure. Irrigation by weep-hose is uneven, due to faults in the irrigation line, and the wall edges in particular have suffered. Some sections that have failed have not been replaced, and where they have been replaced, again plants tend to be ornamental rather than native. Thus the south-facing wall has not maintained a consistent level of attractiveness and greenness.

While the south-facing wall has received less care, invertebrate sightings suggest it has greater overall biodiversity value than the more ornamental north-facing wall.

Drought-tolerant species, including ivy and sedums, dominate, but other species - ox-eye daisy, yarrow, various grasses - from a nearby wildflower area, have also colonised the south wall in areas of plant failure and decay. Irrigation failures caused a dramatic gradient effect, from drought-loving species at the top, to wetloving species at the bottom, providing a range of wildlife conditions.

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Lessons learned There is a conflict between creating a wall that is both attractive and green all-yearround, and one that is biodiverse. To achieve one aspiration, the other must be at least partly compromised. Technological advances in living wall construction and irrigation, combined with well-informed plant choice, make attractive green walls easily attainable these days. (For example, emitter pipes combined with capillary mats ensure more even water coverage than weep-hose systems, while deeper, tilted tray cells hold more moisture for individual plants.)

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Achieving biodiverse living walls is more complicated. We have observed through this study that applying cultivated native plant species does not necessarily bring about biodiversity. Sufficient time and resource is required to research and select the plants. For example, fast-growing drought-tolerant plants should not be associated with less competitive species that will be overtaken in time.

Allowing colonization and succession by nearby native species is favourable and so too is seasonality, yet both will provide patches of brown and decay. Gary Grant, of Green Roof Consultancy Ltd., and original AECOM design team member says, ‘There is a problem establishing native species in natural associations to provide year-round uniformity of appearance’. Certainly, conditions that favour biodiversity can be at odds with what most people consider ‘attractive.’

Until the general population’s aesthetic changes, it is probably best to accept that one goal — either attractiveness or biodiversity — will take priority over the other.

Alexandra Steed is senior director, landscape architecture and Warren Osborne is a director at AECOM.

Photo ©: 6, 7 — AECOM

Any irrigation issues have been solved quickly, and failing plants have been replaced, albeit by ornamentals rather than native species. Reports suggest that customers enjoy sitting by the living wall, and that it has become a great attraction at Westfield London.

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Practice 1

By Lucy Bullivant

Bottom up for masterplanning Masterplanning is changing and will have to develop further, as our cities evolve and new challenges emerge, such as how to house increased populations, regenerate specific post-industrial districts and build new ecological infrastructure.

F

or most of the 20th century,

city administrations drove

development through top-down

masterplans. Now citizens want bottom-up development that can address local issues, and contemporary masterplanners need to accommodate this. The explosion in scale of many cities is accompanied by increasing social divisiveness. If our cities are to be healthy organisms in the future, masterplans will have to address this complex mix of factors in an integrated way.

Tools that the masterplanners can use include an expansion of internet-generated participatory planning, as well as a newer, 3D, geo-referenced approach to landscape design and environmental engineering, with very fine-scale spatial data relevant to such design routinely available as 2D GIS linked to 3D CAD packages.

Spatio-temporal spread models can simulate anything from human migration 50

Landscape Summer 2013

and weather to human ideas, and this convergence of different types of data, including social, appears in the form of dynamic area atlases based on a range of environmental data. It has also spawned bottom-up design processes incorporating mediation games such as Play Noord!, for a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, a layered approach which can create a better speculative understanding of the city.

While such activities may not always be part of an overall masterplanning exercise, key examples of masterplanners addressing the gritty issues of urbanization

1

through environmentally integrative models include James Corner, founder of James Corner Field Operations in New York, whose latest project is a plan for Waterfront Seattle. Creating 27 acres of linked public spaces along the water, it will also reconnect the city with the coastline of Elliott Bay. Corner describes his approach as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a systems-based way of understanding such an environment and its flows, energies and dynamics.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Groundlab, a studio of architects and urban designers, made adaptable design

1 — Groundlab’s masterplan for Longgang, China.

2 — LAND defined the Raggi Verdi as a new way of thinking about Milan.

3 — The Raggi Verdi plan links countryside and city.

4 — Cycle paths lead city dwellers through agricultural land in the ‘new’ Milan.

Photo ©: 1 —Groundlab Photos ©: 2, 3, 4 —LAND

integral to its scheme for Longgang, northeast of the Pearl River Delta, in China. With a projected population of 350,000 the design transforms the polluted and neglected river, a backwater and waste-water sewer, into an ecological corridor. Existing urban villages are retained to form nuclei that lend identity, vitality and human scale to the new development.

The team created a relational urban model that can simultaneously control built mass quantities, as well as a 3D model of the built fabric, based on sets of urban relationships. This makes it easy to generate options and allows the designers to combine variables related to density and typologies, assisting the production of diverse urban patterns with simple controls. Changes in variables such as location and number of density nodes, or particularities of the building catalogue, can be added almost in real time, allowing discussion of the urban fabric and architectural qualities during the decisionmaking process.

Technological tools can bring clarity and flexibility to new ways of seeing entire metropolitan territories. Metrogramma, the Milanese architects and urban designers responsible for the Milan Urban Development Plan, have eradicated zoning and other old policy that blocked the development of a new sustainability /...

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Practice 1 cont.

5 — The Madrid Rio project, designed by West 8, Porras La Casta and Alvarez-Sala, rehabilitated the banks of the Manzanares River.

6 — Madrid Rio is masterplanned at a human scale.

5

This approach has its roots in Raggi Verdi (green rays), an environmental strategy developed, before the city awarded the official commission, by LAND, an Italian-German practice of landscape architects. It linked the city’s green belt to each of its urban districts with a system of green rays connected by a network of cycle-pedestrian paths. Urbanism, looked at this way, is regarded as inseparable from living systems, and makes landscape its basic building block, and an active tissue of a socially nourishing identity, with the city’s post-industrial voids encouraged to become open-hearted spaces rather than enclaves.

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Other architects, such as Burgos + Garrido in Madrid, shift the focus on traditional masterplanning towards a concentration on the design of public realm and landscape, positioning their work somewhere between landscape architecture, urban design and social research. This was a key strategy in the realization of Madrid Río, a major urban scheme with West 8, Porras La Casta and Alvarez-Sala. The project rehabilitated the banks of the Manzanares River and used multiple means to reorientate the city towards it, including parks and boulevards of pines and cherry trees.

MVRDV and Gras’s scheme for Montecorvo, outside Logroño in northern Spain, is designed to be a city extension that will have a CO2-neutral footprint achieved by the production of renewable energy. The mixed-use plan occupies only 10 per cent of the site. Most of the rest of it — 73 per cent — will become an eco-park, mixing park facilities and energy production, with a museum and research centre for renewable and energyefficient technology.

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The pressure to have a plan that can produce an ecologically advanced solution is increasing and, with increasing urbanization, it is vital to understanding the impacts of climate change on the urban environment. Each approach must be individual, because no single policy suits all cities. So future tactics must include a mix of ideas and procedures rather than the abstract uniformity imposed in the past, or the replication across cultures that is still prevalent in the most narrowly commercially focused urban masterplans.

Lucy Bullivant Hon FRIBA is an author, critic, curator and consultant, and the author of Masterplanning Futures, published by Routledge, 2012.

Photo ©: 5 —Municipality of Madrid Photo ©: 6 —West 8 Urban Design and Landscape Architecture

system with an ethos of mixed use. They redefine the city map with 88 new ‘Local Identity Nuclei’ in a multi-centred, networked lattice array, with outlying areas of the city now perceived as part of the metropolitan network. This concept replaces the traditional hub and spoke city of nine administrative zones built up over centuries, since the team decided that it no longer reflected local identities.

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Practice 2

By Jack Campbell Clause

Slum upgrading Landscape architects are central not marginal to efforts to improve the slums of the world. Their skills in spatial thinking and collaboration are vital.

J

ack Campbell Clause won a

Landscape Institute student travel

grant in 2012 and used it to visit

one of the largest slums in the world, Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya. As a student at Leeds Metropolitan University, Jack explored the role landscape architecture plays in slum upgrading.

He recently returned from the two-month stay in Kibera where he worked with Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) to design to deliver ‘productive public spaces’ in the slum.

In the shadows of Nairobi City, the Kibera slum informally and illegally houses at least 250,000 of the breadline labourers who fuel the booming African metropolis.

Due to its size and central location Kibera is one of the most well-known slums in the world. It is by no means the worst.

Some 60% of Nairobi’s residents live in slums yet those slums only take up 5% of developed space. Squeezed into tracts of land that escaped development, riverbanks and waste tips are the first to be used in the desperate rush for shelter.

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The lack of government interest in improving standards is at the root of the problem. In the past the government has refused to acknowledge the existence of slums like Kibera, let alone to legitimize these informal settlements. Recent developments suggest a change in attitude.

There is new interest in improving slums like Kibera. The government is supporting and even initiating improvement programmes. There is a new understanding of the importance of slums. The contemporary view is that investing in the living conditions of the labourer is in the interest of the city.

MY EXPERIENCE To begin to treat the issues present in Kibera I first looked at the basics of landscape architecture. What we do as landscape architects is to design and programme space.

Space requires a movement, internally and connectively. We also protect and enhance ecology and community. These elements have formed the basics of the approach that I have come to use; I call it MSEC (movement, space, ecology and community).

Applying these themes to site and process, and developing each in relation to the others, helped me to address the key requirements of slum upgrading.

(Although these themes were developed specifically to handle slum upgrading, I have also found them helpful in other contexts).

Dysfunctional informality and squalid density are barriers to formal development and improvement of Kibera. The streets are narrow and broken, making access and transport of materials tough and costly.

Access to services or facilities is hindered.

Demands on space are the highest in the city. The space required to build or create the missing infrastructure and services simply does not exist. Shanty housing is a lucrative business in Kibera, with the cost of developing a makeshift shack recovered by one or two months of rent, even if that rent is some of the cheapest in Nairobi. The only perceptible open space is that which Kiberians see as ‘unbuildable’ – typically rubbish dumps and sites that are flooded regularly.

There are no waste-removal services (or any other services) for the residents of Kibera. The natural environment has to bear the brunt. When it rains the earthdug drains and rivers form a surprisingly successful waste-removal service, dragging the mountains of stinking rubbish downstream into the Nairobi Dam, the trash depot. Interestingly the eutrophication and explosion of water hyacinth that covers the dam removes much of the nitrogen.

The result is a water quality at the overspill that is much improved. This variety of eco-service, although functional and innovative of sorts, is a severe threat to human and environmental health.

1 — Jack Campbell Clause.

2 — Measuring the site.

MOVEMENT, SPACE, ECOLOGY AND COMMUNITY The categories of MSEC cover a number of roles that a landscape architect practising in the slum environment can take.

Movement — Kibera definitely does

Photos ©: 1, 2 — Jack Campbell Clause

not have fluid movement systems. Far from it in fact. The odd car crawls over the bumps and puddles of one of the very few mud tracks. Getting in, out and around the slum is done primarily on foot. Improving ‘movement’ is a real key to allowing the kind of selfinitiated upgrading that is needed.

Incrementally enhancing movement

1

and the systems of movement, opening them, building them and introducing elements of planned systems allows people to start to access both their material needs and also their supportive needs. Improvement of movement systems means the creation of a platform on which community-initiated slum upgrading depends.

Landscape architects’ understanding of landscape character and movement is very valuable here. We understand the stories told by ‘place’ and the importance they have to life. To retain the street patterns that have developed out of an incremental logic and tell an important, progressive

story is important not as a sentiment but as a freedom and right.

Nairobi is rolling out a massive roadbuilding project. Kibera is likely to be split in half by a highway that requires 60m of reserve. Sensitive planning may enable this to be less destructive than the current proposal indicates. Engaging with the affected communities and discovering inventive solutions is the way to find sustainable options. One proposal is to make the road into a bridge, creating public open space below it; again this can act as a platform for communities.

Space — There really is very little space in Kibera. Reclaiming and reprogramming space is challenging but brings about great change. There is a ripple effect that is felt well beyond the nearest members of the community to the space Multifunctionality resonates with slums, as does entrepreneurial business. If space in Kibera is designed to possess both these qualities, then the chance of the site’s survival increases dramatically.

2

When I first walked around Kibera visiting the project sites, I noticed that it was the playgrounds that burst with (noisy) success. KDI, the organisation that I interned with, has programmed a playground element into each of its four productive public-space projects. The playgrounds are in constant use and are a /...

Landscape Summer 2013

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Practice 2 cont.

3

relief to the next generation of Kiberans. As the landscape architect of the fourth KDI site, the responsibility (and enjoyment) of designing the fourth playground fell to me.

Using simple materials like bamboo, hyacinth rope, drums and tyres I proposed a musical playground.

Ecology — The ecology of Kibera is evidently in tatters. The shift required to start to build a healthy residential environment relies heavily on ecological improvements. Good planting and understanding of the residents perception of their ecology are critical. How can we design, in tiny spaces, alternatives to using the river as a sewer? Can we design places which remind people that a healthy river means a fruitful and healthy life?

In Kibera I collaborated on a riverbank remediation project with two engineers, one informal-settlement construction specialist and the Ministry of Environment. KDI, which ran the project, was keen to approach the project from a landscape-architectural standpoint, working with the natural systems to mitigate the effects of soil erosion, flooding and trash build up. Our solution incorporated protective measures on the riverbanks that provide space for flood volumes and the use of a Community Cooker (a Kenyan invention that turns waste into fuel) to incinerate trash collected in the reserve pools.

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Community ­— Community is the key to progressive, sustainable slum upgrading.

The radical urbanist Stewart Brand wrote, ‘The main thing is not to bulldoze the slums. Treat the people as pioneers’. The residents of Kibera and other slums are some of the most determined urban inhabitants. They are individuals but they rely on one another heavily. They have a proven ‘communal mentality’ in the informal systems that govern their society.

Landscape architects are communicators and have been using community participatory design principles for decades.

Can we mobilise to capture all this human energy into a discernible, constructed landscape that brings the living standards in these crucial urban environments out of its nightmare?

At KDI I helped design workshops for slum residents that could really communicate the breadth of options available to them and solicit the design input that would make sustainable places.

ROLE OF THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT As a landscape architect I have had trouble coming to terms with the question of what our profession can do realistically to improve slums. Slums form largely out of a failure of urban governance in the face

of massive urban migration. Informal housing develops as a survival strategy.

The slum is defined by its issues: squalid environment, unemployment, crime and drugs. Yet dealing directly with these problems may not be the most practical approach.

People generally move into slums out of choice, not free choice, but choice nonetheless. Slums offer the cheapest and most basic shelter, support, and provide a platform to grasp at dreams. These dreams, however, are a struggle to realise, and what may have looked like hope, in the offers of slum living, can become a captive system of injustice and discrimination.

Much of the required improvement needs to be provided by external bodies governments, road authorities and health ministries - but the energy of the residents can also become a force here. What we can provide to slum environments is the framework that allows the residents to pioneer the slum-upgrading process. Much of this framework needs to come in the form of social programs and communication strategies. But importantly for us, a vast amount of the slumupgrading framework needs to be physically built and to progress through community engagement.

3 — Rivers serve as the means of waste disposal.

4 — There is a homogeneity of materials in this dense but vibrant slum.

LOOKING FORWARD Of the eight billion people on earth, one billion are slum dwellers living in the growing shadows of our ever-expanding cities. The United Nations predicts that by 2050, one billion more people will be added to this figure, making ‘slums’ one of the critical issues we face in the first half of the twenty-first century.

Photos ©: 3, 4 — Jack Campbell Clause

Facilitating slum upgrading can and will be done by a great number of professions.

Among the built-environment specialisms, landscape architecture is often considered ephemeral or as a luxury. Yet this profession is instrumental in offsetting the impending threats of climate change, possibly the largest challenge of our generation. Slum proliferation and the associated hazards could be just as catastrophic if they are not met with an equal amount of urgency.

Our design skills are required. By approaching slums as the new frontier, landscape architecture can be the integral force in remediating and protecting our cities and their populations into the future.

Through the training in spatial design, the core understanding of how people move through landscape, and providing solutions based on ecology and culture, our profession can expand.

4

My First Impressions Walking into Kibera there was immediately a break down in my urban conditioning. Forms in the slum become jumbled and disordered as the shanty buildings stagger away into the distance.

The texture and material make-up becomes somehow homogenous, composed of anything cheap, available or discarded by others; mud, corrugated iron and wooden off-cuts.

Roaring, wailing Nairobi quickly dissolved into a dull, background drone as the formal metropolis was left behind.

What became audible was the clattering and banging of makeshift, informal industries, masked now and then by blasting reggae, hip-hop and gospel music. The formal city’s unyielding smell of diesel-plus-dust is replaced by fresh whiffs of frying dough (the best mandazi – Kenya’s answer to the morning croissant, consisting of sweet dough fried in deep oil and usually generously sugar coated – in Nairobi) frequently, and in contrast, interrupted by rancid wafts of open latrines, decomposing organic waste, or, barbequeing cow shin (my personal worst).

My eyes and feet are tested to collaborate effectively over the broken, muddy tracks.

People are everywhere. I am learning a new code of street conduct. Whose tracks I follow depends on a judgment made of the owner’s readiness to get their shoes mucky (It is not just stepping into mud I’m worried about!). While uneasily keeping one eye on my feet and one on the corrugated iron rooftops that jut out at head height, I must also be attentive ahead, anticipating the next obstacle to evade; puddles, dogs, children, big holes, careering carts and the occasional staggering drunkard.

The awful living conditions, children playing in sewage and the ever-inquiring eyes draw out my guilty conscience.

The disparity in wealth is so evident that it is stomach turning. But, through all the darkness there’s warmth here.

Kibera is marvellously independent in character. Kiberians that I’ve met have been remarkably positive and proud of belonging to their community. Slum dwellers possess a positively charged determination to achieve, and be happy.

When I walk through Kibera I can feel a swelling, ferocious energy radiating.

It fills me with excitement.

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Practice 2 cont.

Educational perspective

By Chris Royffe

At Leeds Metropolitan University we encourage postgraduate landscape architecture students to choose topics and sites for their major projects that are both personally challenging and professionally relevant. Professional relevance is sometimes interpreted as serving the current needs of the landscape profession but we believe this can be very limiting and that we should be confronting topics and sites that are not necessarily in the mainstream of landscape practice at present but are never-the-less significant and can assist in pointing the way forward for the profession and for future generations of practitioners.

For a number of years students at Leeds have been able to ‘top up’ their postgraduate diploma qualification to an MA award by undertaking a research-based dissertation project.

For some students this seemed overly constraining and recently we extended the menu of opportunities and particularly encouraged students to choose topics in design and practice settings and to reflect on processes and

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products from their direct experience. The dissertation project has now evolved into a ‘personal focus portfolio’ through which the student can demonstrate their abilities in practice, contextualise their actions and reflect on the outcomes.

Jack’s Kibera project is a perfect example of the value of postgraduate study in a practice setting, a project that is creative, innovative and demanding in terms of research, highly relevant on a personal level and more generally in terms of human needs.

His major design project focused on developing a theoretical construct for the role of landscape architecture within the slum environment. He explored opportunities and constraints and presented a range of guidelines of relevance to both the macro and micro scales.

Speculative solutions were proposed informed by research into cultural, environmental and technical issues.

As well as presenting this theoretical project for assessment on the landscape architecture course Jack also used it to help

gain him (against stiff competition) the internship offered by Kounkuey Design Initiative. The opportunity to work on landscape projects in Kibera has also provided the practice setting for his MA personal focus portfolio. Jack has been able to test out some of his theoretical design thinking and reflect on the implications of carrying this type of work forward.

Working in a team with other student designers was also the catalyst for four students including Jack entering the 2012 AECOM Urban SOS competition.

Winning the competition and receiving sponsorship and investment as part of the prize has created further opportunities to continue design development work in Kibera and to submit a portfolio that tells the story of this exciting and hugely relevant project.

Chris Royffe is principal lecturer in landscape architecture and urban design, and course leader of the PGDip/MA in landscape architecture at Leeds Metropolitan University.

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Practice 3

Changes to Code of Conduct NOTICE TO MEMBERS

T

he Board of Trustees of the

Landscape Institute has agreed

a number of changes to the Code

of Conduct to which all members of the Landscape Institute are required to adhere.

The previous Code of Conduct was written at the time of the granting of the Royal Charter, and was an important part of the new documentation that was put in place at that time. It was written in close consultation with the Architects Registration Board, and followed the ARB format. Since then the style and nature of such Codes of Conduct have generally been modernized, and become more reflective of the attributes considered necessary for each profession. The changes agreed in 2012 by the Landscape Institute Board of Trustees are as follows:

1.

5.

The Code now carries the title â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Code of Standards of Conduct and Practice for Landscape Professionalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Standard 7, which concerns professional competence, is more explicit than the old Standard 6 which addressed the same theme. Standard 7 makes explicit that members are required to maintain their CPD and their evidence of having done so.

It also makes explicit the responsibility of members who employ staff to support their professional development.

2.

The standards have been divided into groups, indicating those which are concerned with promoting professional attitudes (standards 1-5); promoting professional competence (standards 6-7) and promoting trust in professional relationships (standards 8-13). Although these cover substantially the same ground as the old standards they are more distinctly identified.

3.

Standard 2 expands upon Standard 1.1 in the previous Code, which required members to avoid involvement in anything that might be discreditable to the profession. The new code includes a new requirement not to discriminate.

4.

Standard 5 is explicit about proper conduct including not taking or accepting bribes.

This was implicit in Standard 1 of the previous Code but has been revised in the light of the Bribery Act 2010.

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6.

Standard 13 requires members to have a written procedure for dealing with complaints from clients or others.

Standard 12 in the previous code required prompt and appropriate handling of complaints but did not specify the need for a written procedure.

The Code can be downloaded from the Landscape Institute website.

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Landscape Summer 2013

61

Knowledge

By Giles Heap

Specifying stone It is important to specify stone correctly for external paving.

This piece discusses why labels of frost resistance are not always adequate, and looks at the advantages and limitations of the introduction of CE labelling for stone.

at a time (as paving stones do), moisture is able to soak deep into the stone and when the temperature drops below freezing, that moisture will expand as it turns to ice. It is this constant expansion and contraction of moisture within the stone that can lead to the stone failing.

So be warned, just because a stone passed the ‘Frost Test’ doesn’t necessarily mean that it will survive a British winter!

W

hen specifying with stone,

it is common practice to

refer to the British

Standards BS EN 1341:2001, BS EN 1342:2001 and BS EN 1343:2001 which set out the requirements and test methods for natural stone (external) paving, setts and kerbs respectively. One of the tests specified within these documents is that for testing a stone for frost resistance, BS EN 12371:2010, but there is a little problem of which landscape architects should be aware.

It is true that some stones work well in cold weather and some do not, but in the last few years there have been a number of failures of natural stone paving that had passed the test as stated within BS EN 12371:2010.

As a result of these failures, some of which were quite high profile, experts have looked a little more closely at the test itself, only to realise that as the original test was 62

Landscape Summer 2013

1

designed with cladding in mind, there may be a fundamental flaw in the testing methodology when it is applied specifically to paving products. The principle is simple: stone cladding gets wet, but unlike paving it doesn’t sit in water for any protracted length of time and any water that is soaked up, is much more likely to drain away or evaporate within hours.

Here in the UK our winter temperature can cycle above and below freezing many times over the course of the season, indeed many times each night. Generally when it does, the ground is also pretty wet and probably has been for some time. When stone is effectively sitting in water for weeks

How can you tell which stones will be suitable for paving? You can’t, but if you use a trusted supplier you will have a better chance of not getting caught out.

As a rule of thumb, stones that have a low water absorption (< 3%) tend to cope best, so most granites and some British sandstones and ‘yorkstones’ will be a safe choice. A number of imported sandstones and ‘yorkstones’ will not succeed and many limestones will not be suitable for external use.

CE MARKING In July 2013, the new CE Marking regulations for natural stone come in to force, with the aim of ensuring that what the client orders complies with the appropriate set of European Standards.

However there has been some uncertainty as to what this actually means to the supply chain.

1 — Frost cracking of ‘frost-resistant’ paving.

From July, all materials (natural stone) supplied within the EU must have a CE Mark attached to the packaging with the relevant European Nomenclature (EN) clearly stated. In the case of external paving for example, that is going to be BSEN 1341:2012 (slabs), BSEN 1342:2012 (setts) and BSEN 1343:2001 (kerbs). BSEN 1341 & 2 were published this year.

On each crate of stone it will be required to show a CE Mark and possibly the certificate stating certain facts about the products contained. For paving, these are likely to be as follows: A. name or identifying mark of the manufacturer; B. last two digits of the year in which the marking was affixed;

Photo ©: 1 — Giles Heap

C. reference to the appropriate Standard and the year of its publication (i.e. EN 1341:2010); D. description of the product and its intended use: 1) generic name: ‘natural stone slabs’; 2) traditional name, petrological family, typical colour and place of origin; 3) i ntended use: ‘for external pedestrian and/or vehicular circulation areas’; 4) s urface treatment of the stone (if any).

E. performance on the essential characteristics listed: 1. r elease of dangerous substances: where relevant; 2. breaking strength, dealt with by flexural strength; 3. s lipperiness, dealt with by slip resistance for pedestrian areas 4. s kid resistance, where required for vehicular areas; 5. durability of breaking strength, of slipperiness and of skid resistance: i. freeze/thaw resistance, measured as the mean flexural strength (in MPa) after 56 freeze/thaw cycles; ii. freeze/thaw resistance with de-icing salts; iii. p olished slip or skid resistance declared in accordance with national provision.

G654s are technically just not as good as others.

So it will still be important for the specifier to ensure that their choice of stone is technically competent to do the job required. Once that stone has been specified, however, CE Marking will help to reduce opportunities for the more unscrupulous suppliers to supply cheaper materials under the guise of those specified.

Of course this is still open to abuse, but as CE Marking is effectively a guarantee of conformance regarding source, colour, tolerances and technical capability, it will allow an easier avenue for compensation if the goods do not conform.

A different set of details will be required for kerb or setts.

CE Marking will probably make the use of trade names less common, bringing some transparency to the specifier. However It is important to remember that many stones have two or more different variations with the same ‘name’. Take G654 granite from China for instance. There are many different quarries in the same region that sell G654 granite, but not all G654 is the same. Some is fine-grained, some is coarsegrained. Some has many veins running through it, some has very few and some

References — BS EN 12371:2010, bit.ly/10AD7QM — BS EN 1341:2012, bit.ly/Z9QuXe — BS EN 1342:2012, bit.ly/YxgcZX — BS EN 1343:2001, bit.ly/Z3hrg9 Giles Heap is a director of CED Stone.

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Culture

Landscape Institute members and registered practices have been invited to take part in a new lecture series designed to stimulate debate on the development of our landscape.

I

n 2010 the Government Office for Science published the Foresight Land Use Futures Project. This claimed that: ‘the next fifty years will see even greater pressure on land use: continuing expected growth in population and incomes, the impact of climate change, new technologies and changing public attitudes and values will all have profound effects.’ Since the report was published we have seen significant changes in government policy on wind farms; changing attitudes to nuclear power; growing concerns about food security; the ending of detailed planning guidance; and a severe economic downturn. The landscape profession needs to be prepared for the massive changes which are taking place.

Much of the work of the Institute is focused on preparing members for these changes: BIM, green infrastructure, public health and landscape; designing with water; GLVIA all represent the Institute’s commitment to equipping members for these changes.

Landscape Futures is an opportunity to take this work to a new stage.

The first two events will take place in London to be followed by a number of events outside of the capital.

Details will be announced shortly.

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Our land is a finite resource, and it is set to come under increasing pressure as the century unfolds. Factors such as climate change, demographic shifts, and changing patterns of work and habitation will all create major challenges.

Foresight. Land Use Futures: Making the most of land in the 21st century (2010).

The Government Office for Science, London.

(Housing) demand (in England) could outstrip supply by 750,000 by 2025, equivalent to the combined current housing demand of Birmingham, Liverpool and Newcastle.

Schmeucker K. (2011) The good, the bad and the ugly: Housing demand 2025, IPPR.

Unless the footprint of the food system on the environment is reduced, the capacity of the earth to produce food for humankind will be compromised with grave implications for future food security.

Foresight. The Future of Food and Farming (2011) Executive Summary. The Government Office for Science, London.

Expert judgement indicates that, assessed across the broad range of terrestrial and aquatic habitat types, about 30% of services are currently declining and many others are in a reduced or degraded state.

UK National Ecosystem Assessment (2011) The UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis of the Key Findings. UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge.

Over 5 million people in England and Wales live and work in properties that are at risk of flooding from rivers or the sea.

Environment Agency.

1, 2, 3 — Challenges that the landscape profession may wish to address include intensified use of our cities, a desire to reconnect with nature, and alternative methods of energy generation.

Join the conversation on the future of the landscape profession.

Photo ©: 1 —Anizza Photo ©: 2 —Luckydoor Photo ©: 3 —Acnaleksy

T

o complement the debate about

the future of landscape, the

Landscape Institute’s policy

committee wants to find out what members, students and affiliates think about the current state of the landscape profession and its future direction, and try to develop ideas that allow the Landscape Institute to look to the future needs of the profession. Sue Illman, Landscape Institute president, has recently written to members and branches inviting them to join ‘the conversation’ and describe how they anticipate the career path of landscape professionals might change in the coming ten, 15 or 20 years.

You can join in the conversation in a number of ways.

You can participate in an event being hosted by your local Landscape Institute branch; organise a discussion amongst colleagues at your place of work; or send your own personal response by writing directly to futurevision@ landscapeinstitute.org before the end of June.

We welcome ambitious and radical ideas for the long-term future of the profession.

We have suggested a few questions for you to consider as a starting point, but feel free to send views on any theme you choose.

• How do you think the landscape profession could or should change in the future, perhaps to meet the challenges of a low-carbon economy, a changing climate, demographic change, new technologies, or changes in the global economy?

1

• What work topics or projects are you or your employer engaged in, or interested in, that lie beyond the traditional scope of the landscape professional?

• Where do you see new opportunities emerging for landscape professionals in the public or private sectors in future?

This is a member-led conversation that will be reported back to the Landscape Institute’s Policy Committee later in the year.

The deadline for feedback will be the end of June, when the contributions will be collated. We will send reminders via the LI News and Events email update nearer the time. Members of the policy committee will then review all the submissions and invite a number of contributors to author short articles for the website and for a future edition of Landscape.

2

3

Landscape Summer 2013

65

A word...

By Tim Waterman

Crowdsourcing

The problem lies primarily not in our hearts and minds, but rather in our wallets.

The market logic of nearly all real-estate development is and has been for some time at odds with good urbanism, putting profit and speculation over, for example, quality of life or aesthetics. Finance is also international, but urban experience is local.

The results are grossly scaled developments on massive, cleared sites. We cannot fix what is wrong with urban design until we find alternative economic rationales for urban renewal. As a profession, we have clutched the marionette strings that tie us to this market logic, because despite the mad puppeteer, we cannot imagine a way out of the puppet show.

An alternative may be coming into existence, however, and intelligent and articulate young professionals may very well be able to take the lead. The emerging market model that has the potential to renew practices in development 66

Landscape Summer 2013

and procurement is crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing, according to Wikipedia (itself crowdsourced), is ‘the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers’. The idea of web-based collaboration on this model has stretched into almost all realms of human endeavour, and has moved into the lived space of our landscapes.

Crowdsourcing may be used to map urban possibilities, from brownfield sites to vacant shops, to coordinate planning and design efforts, and to raise funds. Crowdsourced funding may comprise direct and voluntary donations to provide for a project or investments.

ways than mere consultation.

Crowdsourcing for new designs of all types, particularly new products, has been breathlessly hyped by media and technology journalists. It’s hard to care much about more new products, when most just become clutter in our homes and in landfill, but it is genuinely exciting to think that we could be more thoughtful and collaborative in how we redesign our cities. This approach could renew development practice and refresh tired neighbourhoods without destroying them, ‘decanting’ them, or imposing alien tastes upon them. Well-designed crowdsourcing could bring communities into the design process from the beginning in more real

Crowdsourcing, finally, needs to be owned and managed by the public, and not by private interests. In this way we achieve not urban renewal, but development practice renewal, development economics renewal. It’s not our cities that are broken, but our systems for making them, and crowdsourcing could help us renew those systems, and thus our world.

Small and/or young practices should (carefully, as the path is slick with snake-oil) explore the possibilities of crowdsourcing and become involved in the creation of new collaborative processes for urban design. It’s a way to create interesting, positive, and meaningful work that cuts development capital out of the picture altogether. It’s a way to encourage activism and proactive behaviour in the architectures so that we may become more ethical. It’s a way to give communities back a large measure of involvement and control in development processes. It’s a way out of the concentration of capital and resources in London and a redistribution of ingenuity and optimism to the rest of the country.

Tim Waterman is a landscape architectural writer, speaker and critic, who lectures at the Writtle School of Design and is a studio tutor at UCL Bartlett School of Architecture. His books on landscape architecture have been translated into seven languages. He is the honorary editor of Landscape.

Photo ©: Agnese Sanvito

L

ike earthquakes or tsunamis,

development can often strike

communities with a cataclysmic

force that can make neighbourhoods unrecognisable seemingly overnight. Often communities never recover. We have tried for a long time to reconcile Jacobsian ideals of incremental growth and a desire for genuinely mixeduse cities with contemporary urban design without much success.

Landscape Summer 2013

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