Landscape Journal Winter 2019: The International Issue - New opportunities in landscape

Issue 1 - 2019

The International Issue New opportunities in landscape

landscapeinstitute.org

DESIGN TANK PHOTO MARIUS RUA

Parklets 2.0

Design: SOLA, Johan Verde & Hong Ngo-Aandal

vestre.co.uk

We will have to ensure that we are armed with a broad spectrum of knowledge and that we are competent enough to deal with climate change, a shortage of natural resources, environmental pollution and a potential economic crisis.

Big ambition Wei Deng CMLI Find out more on page 26

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CONTENTS

05 Welcome

In this edition, we explore international projects and perspectives, to understand where future opportunities lie for the profession.

BRIEFING

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FEATURES

Where next?

Nine landscape practitioners on where the next big opportunities lie for the profession.

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Four reports on landscape-led approaches in Singapore, Beijing, Antwerp and Barcelona.

Valuable work Three different takes on landscape and ‘value’.

37 Hot out there 13 Self-worth

15 Canada’s capital

17 Pay it forward

20 City crits Matthew Carmona on the state of international design review.

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Character matters Integrating landscape character and ecosystem assessment into land-use planning in India.

PROJECTS

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Big ambition What do the LI Dame Sylvia Crowe Award 2018 entries say about the profession globally?

ON MY MIND

74 Transcending history Gina Ford on using the ideas of the past to invent the future of America’s landscapes.

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Intervening in the city

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38 Clean air acts

40 Rough diamond

42 Block by block

Going global

Three UK-based landscape practices on how they’ve built an international presence and how to keep it.

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India and China

How India and China are turning to landscape to solve the problems of urbanisation.

53 Avoiding suburbia 55 Soak it up

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Drawing inspiration

Landscape students at the University of East London visit the LI archives.

LI LIFE

62 A call to action Rhys Jones on why the landscape profession needs a humanitarian mandate.

63 Will travel for landscape Four past winners of the LI Student Travel Award on their experiences.

66 Reflections on value Looking back at the Landscape Institute Conference 2018.

70 Celebrating people, place and nature Highlights from the Landscape Institute Awards 2018.

72 Events and training Events and CPD opportunities from the Landscape Institute.

WELCOME

Publisher Darkhorse Design Ltd T (0)20 7323 1931 darkhorsedesign.co.uk tim@darkhorsedesign.co.uk Interim editor George Bull Editorial Advisory Panel Eleanor Trenfield CMLI, Landscape Planner, ETLA and chair of the Panel.

Dr. David Buck AMLI, Senior Lecturer in Landscape, University of Gloucestershire.

Amanda McDermott CMLI, Landscape Architect, 2B Landscape Consultancy Ltd. Peter Sheard CMLI, Landscape Architect.

John Stuart-Murray FLI, Landscape Architect.

Jo Watkins PPLI, Landscape Architect.

Jenifer White CMLI, National Landscape Adviser, Historic England.

Rosie Wicheloe, Landscape Ecologist, London Wildlife Trust.

Holly Birtles CMLI, Associate Landscape Architect B|D. Jaideep Warya CMLI, Landscape Architect, The Landscape Partnership.

Lily Bakratsa, Landscape Architect, Architect and Design Educator.

Landscape Institute President Adam White CEO Daniel Cook Executive Director Marketing and Communications Paul Lincoln To comment on any aspect of Landscape Institute communications please contact: Paul.Lincoln@landscapeinstitute.org Landscapeinstitute.org @talklandscape landscapeinstitute landscapeinstituteUK Subscription and membership enquiries: membership@landscapeinstitute.org The Landscape Institute aims to lead and inspire the landscape profession to ensure it is equipped to deliver its purpose under our Royal Charter for the benefit of people, place and nature, for today and for future generations.

To advertise in Landscape, contact Jamie Dwelly or Sarah Simpson: 020 3603 7930 Cleaner, greener. Landscape is printed on paper sourced from EMAS (Environmental Management and Audit Scheme) certified manufacturers to ensure responsible printing.

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.

Landscape is the official journal of the Landscape Institute, ISSN: 1742–2914 © 2019 Landscape Institute. Landscape is published four times a year by Darkhorse Design.

Issue 1 - 2019

landscapeinstitute.org

The International Issue New opportunities in landscape

Cover image © Charles Lamb.

See page 63.

Beyond borders On behalf of the Editorial Advisory Panel, the Landscape Institute team, our editor for this edition, George Bull, and the publishing team at Darkhorse, I have the pleasure of welcoming you to this latest edition of Landscape – the International Issue.

At the time of writing this (16 December 2018), the UK parliament is in chaos over Brexit, we are none the wiser about what will happen on the 29 March 2019, and there is a sense of general anxiety across the country. I frequently receive surveys from Chambers of Commerce asking how my business is preparing for Brexit. Construction events that I have attended over the past year have consistently speculated on possible Brexit implications, ranging from talent loss across the construction sector to how the port of Dover is preparing for customs gridlock. So, close your news app, grab a couple of hours away from all the noise, and immerse yourself in a world beyond our borders.

In this issue, we take a global look at the landscape profession, focusing on international projects and perspectives. We ask nine professionals where they see the next big opportunities for the profession globally (p.9, ‘Where Next?’); Dr Wei Deng reflects on entries to the Landscape Institute’s new international award category, the Dame Sylvia Crowe Award (p.26, ‘Big Ambition’); and we hear from three UK-based practices that have built an international presence (p.45, ‘Going Global’).

Elsewhere, we hear how two of the fastest urbanising countries on the planet, India and China, are turning to landscape to solve the challenges of rapid urbanisation (p.52, ‘Avoiding

suburbia’ and p.55, ‘Soak it up’); and how city governments in Singapore, Beijing, Antwerp and Barcelona are starting to change their policy, practice and approach to landscape in response to environmental, societal and economic challenges, opening up new opportunities for our profession (p.36, ‘Intervening in the city’).

This edition also includes a powerful piece by Rhys Jones about the LI’s newly formed Humanitarian Working Group, highlighting how little our profession is doing to assist in humanitarian projects compared to engineers and architects, and inviting members to get involved (p.62, ‘A call to action’).

The stories in this issue provide a broad picture of where future opportunities may lie for our profession and the fundamental role that the profession plays in society and the environment. From an individual, practice or institutional perspective, it seems that only through deeper awareness, integration and collaboration can these opportunities be realised.

This edition is a rallying call to open up and look outwards in these uncertain times.

Eleanor Trentfield CMLI Director, ETLA Honorary editor of Landscape

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Where next?

We asked nine landscape professionals the same question and invited them to interpret it however they wanted: ‘Where do you see the next big opportunities for the landscape profession globally?’ Their answers may surprise you.

Mike Browell FLI

Principal, Weddle Landscape Design We are now beginning to see the signs of a rush to develop countryside recreation opportunities in China. Weddle have been working in China for 10 years and the scale of our projects is breathtaking. It has been an interesting challenge. But it’s the lack of countryside recreation planning that has concerned me, and I am optimistic that things are about to change for the better.

Most of our urban projects are parks and gardens for multistorey apartment towers. These are being built on a massive scale to accommodate the local rural population, who are displaced as cities expand into green countryside. Rural Chinese people are keen to live a better life in the city. For the first time, their generation has become urbanised and they have access to gardens and parks for leisure. They are turning their backs on the countryside.

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On one large housing project for 20,000 people, we suggested allotment gardens. The planning officer said this would not be appropriate; the rural population wanted to throw away their tools and forget their hard lives on the land, we were told. This is not surprising. China’s countryside has been dramatically simplified over the course of the 20th century. I have travelled hundreds of miles between cities, whizzed along in high-speed trains, passing through a monotonous landscape of rice paddies and linear strips of poplar trees. In the developed parts of China, most woodland and cultural history has been wiped away.

When I ask my Chinese friends where they visit on their holidays, they usually say Europe.

Around the world, I see increasingly wealthy Chinese tourists at international destinations, but rarely holidaying in China. Conversely, I am often, not surprisingly, the only European visiting Chinese National Parks, because very few Westerners have heard of Zhangjiajie or Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Domestic tourism in China is still largely ‘religious tourism’.

Weddle has had a few opportunities to initiate countryside planning for leisure, but there is often uncertainty that city people will visit, because there is no strong tradition of visiting the countryside.

China has some of the finest highquality landscapes which are largely underdeveloped: imagine a mountain area bigger than the English Lake District where a temple on a single mountain is the only developed tourist destination.

Domestic tourism in China is still largely ‘religious tourism’. One of our projects is a new cultural tourism destination in Nanjing: Niushou Mountain. A Buddhist temple has been built on the mountain top and our role has been to plan the journey to the temple. We have created 10 recreation activity events on the mountain road, any of which would be a destination in themselves.

The next generation of UK-trained Chinese landscape architects are already back home and working in cities, usually on housing schemes.

Will they have the skills and knowhow to design for and encourage countryside leisure? This is the next big challenge.

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Andrew Croft

Director, Chris Blandford Associates What do Leonardo DiCaprio, St Mark’s Square and Skara Brae all have in common? Well, to a greater or lesser extent they are all drivers for ongoing tourism crises. Maya Bay in Thailand is now closed, unable to cope with the hordes following in Leonardo’s footsteps. Venice is literally sinking under the weight of its tourists and their cruise ships, while Skara Brae is helping drive a new wave of tourism onto the shores of Orkney.

Stephanie Howsam

Associate Director, Scape Design Associates Most of our projects are in the international hospitality sector, where we are witnessing the emergence of what some economists have labelled the ‘aspirational class’. This new social elite is globally aware, relatively well-informed and more inclined to profess a social conscience than previous generations. Its members are arguably less concerned about what they have than what they do, and travel experiences are significant in demonstrating that.

Tourism is not going away. Growing middle classes in India, China and the Middle East are seeking out authentic places to visit; bucket-list destinations to see and be seen at. Many of these destinations are also highly sensitive, as either cultural or natural landscapes or a combination of both.

In this space, there is much for the landscape profession to offer. We have the skills, the mindset and the ability to think beyond economics and numbers and to help host communities manage tourism in the most sensitive places on Earth.

In this space, there is much for the landscape profession to offer.

Travel and tourism is a $8.3 trillion industry responsible for 10.4 per cent of global GDP, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. But the recent special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes stark reading for the environment and the future of international tourism: the total destruction of our coral reefs with a 2°C global temperature increase, for example. In past decades, many new hospitality destinations have been ruinous to their environments and, today, the hospitality industry continues to struggle to balance negative impacts on the environment and local communities, with social and economic benefits.

The IPCC report furthers the debate about where the balance lies between catastrophic climate change and the ever-increasing appetite for, and indeed expectation of, worldwide travel. Our unique perspective as landscape architects puts us firmly amongst a global community of professionals who can positively

As a practice, we are committed to developing our work and skills in this space, whether that is on Orkney, at Stonehenge or across the Middle East.

We know our blend of environment, landscape and heritage skills, coupled with a focus on visitor experience, can deliver meaningful outcomes for these places.

We see real openings for landscape professionals to develop new opportunities [or aspects] for tourism, with approaches that are rooted in place, that safeguard the places we treasure and that deliver outstanding visitor experience and tangible benefits for host communities.

Maybe one day we will even get to bring DiCaprio back to Thailand’s Maya Bay.

influence development decisions. The next big opportunity lies in our ability to harness the social conscience of the aspirational class to become a holistic activist, to deliver a sustainable and engaging world.

In the international hospitality sector we are witnessing the emergence of what some economists have labelled the ‘aspirational class’.

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Brendon Chamberlain

Director, WAHO Landscape Architects At WAHO India, we believe – and hope – that our industry is heading into a phase where we need to be aiming higher than just designing and implementing beautiful spaces.

We need to design integrated spaces that create habitats for humans and functioning ecosystems.

As a studio, we see some key areas from which really good design can originate.

Lionel Fanshawe FLI

Managing Director, terra firma At terra firma, we have made it our business to really ‘get out there’ and reach as many parts of the world as we possibly can. For a relatively small practice, without any significant backing, this has been a labour of love. terra firma has certainly headed for the conventional overseas hotspots for our profession, with an offshoot office in the Middle East since 2006 and a team just returned from a masterplanning exercise in China. But

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One area is innovative thinking and technology – from harnessing kinetic energy in a playground to power the lighting and signage of that immediate area, to using a building’s waste water to create wetland habitats within a site, which in turn helps clean the water before discharge. Even these small examples can become beautiful and saleable features of a project, helping to tell the story of the site.

We need to design integrated spaces that create habitats for humans and functioning ecosystems. it is the eccentricity of seeking work in less-well-known areas that has proved most rewarding.

Residing temporarily in Beirut in 2000, I chanced upon a visiting UK Trade Mission which, interested in my being there and the almost incidental accumulation of new work in that glorious city, suggested that, since I preferred uncharted waters, I might consider joining them on a mission to the Baltic States the following year.

What transpired was a long-term friendship and working relationship with a Latvian planning consultancy that has been involved in massive changes in the region. In turn, this prepared us well for the formation of our own landscape practice in Lithuania four years ago with a returning national who had worked with us for over eight years in the UK. We now how have five kilometres of continuous projects leading into the city centre of Vilnius.

There are many UK practices and organisations working overseas and

Another area is detailed planting.

We believe the planting of a project should be designed to be aesthetically appealing to the users, while also providing the framework for a functioning ecosystem, however small. Areas that do not directly serve a defined function are considered for this type of planting. Green façades and roofs form part of the biodiversity of a site and have a tangible financial benefit in creating shade and reducing heating and cooling costs.

Another tangible benefit, for which there is a growing body of evidence, is that our collective health benefits from having direct contact with the natural world. Our aim, through well-planned and executed landscape architecture and urban design, is to bring this natural world back into our urban context.

I believe 10 per cent of LI members are currently located overseas, and I am sure many more are interested in joining them. I have been pressing for an initiative to reinstate an LI International Working Group and hope that this may come about soon. LUC’s Rhys Jones is also developing an emerging Humanitarian Working Group and I see this as an important part of our renewed engagement with the international community at all levels and in all parts of the world.

We now how have five kilometres of continuous projects leading into the city centre of Vilnius.

BRIEFING

Luke Engleback CMLI

Studio Engleback The World Bank stated in 2010 that the sum of all urban areas that existed in 2000 would double by 2030, and that 90 per cent of this growth would be in developing countries. The global human population crossed the 50 per cent threshold of urban living in 2007 and it will be more than 70 per cent by the middle of this century. Add to this the combined threats of rapid biodiversity loss (58 per cent

Gotzone Sagardui Goikoetxea

Deputy Mayor and Head of the Mayor’s Office, Bilbao In recent years, Bilbao, the largest city and economic capital of the Basque Country, has undergone far-reaching environmental, urban, economic and social transformations that have made our city a model to be copied internationally. The spearhead has undoubtedly been the appeal of the Guggenheim Museum, which continues to be our main icon. However, there have been other major projects, including the Metro, tramway, regeneration and modernisation of neighbourhoods, port and airport, and regeneration of the river estuary.

wildlife loss globally since the 1970s) and the mounting impacts of climate change, both of which will affect health and economies, and it is clear that we need a different, whole-systems approach to city building.

I term this ‘Eco Urbanism’. This is landscape-led and evidence-based.

Landscape architects, with a foot in the environmental humanities and in science, are trained to have a flexible, multiscale view, and must play a key role in urban and rural planning.

We applied this approach to several projects in Rwanda.

This has involved new challenges and, at the same time, new development and growth areas such as Zorrotzaurre; a hub with an industrial past that is now a true hotbed of talent and knowledge exchange. We want it to be a place for businesses, new creative industries, talent and universities, but also for housing designed for people. It is at this point that new sectors and professions have come into play, including architecture, design and landscape. They are all essential in this Bilbao that we are building.

Cities are clearly becoming a benchmark for the population, places to work, but also to live. The landscape professional has a fundamental role in developing strategies and actions for a sustainable, resilient, multifunctional and healthy city. Those strategies introduce nature and the landscape as focal points of urban planning and appropriate management of the green infrastructure and the cultural, energy and natural resources of the city.

In the case of the Bilbao metropolitan area, the future lies in compact urban planning to consolidate

This approach has been central to Studio Engleback for the past two decades. Recently, working with Light Earth Designs, we applied it to several projects in Rwanda, central Africa. Our project at Cactus Green Park in Kigali, the capital city, is being built as an exemplar project. It places natural capital literally at its heart – a park at the centre reaches all 650 homes – to enable people to continue growing food, conserve soil, sequester carbon, provide cooling, attenuate surface water run-off, and facilitate community, health and wellbeing.

Our project in Rwanda is being held up as a model for future development in the country, because it combines passive architecture and passive urbanism, local materials, and local landscape ‘signatures’ to address the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss to human health and wellbeing.

the urban centres, thus avoiding urban sprawl, and showcasing its heritage, natural and river features. A future driven by inclusive urban planning focused on people and their diversity, along with sustainable mobility. Bilbao must address the known effects of climate change (e.g. heat islands and floods) by means of appropriate planning of its green infrastructure, by connecting it with the environment and embracing water management.

Bilbao has a green belt that is part of the city’s green infrastructure and which plays a fundamental role in key aspects such as environmental education, wellbeing and food production. The Bilbao river estuary, at the heart of the life of the city, must prevail not only as a place for leisure activities, but also as a natural drain for the surrounding area, while remaining its pre-eminent natural feature.

Within the process of transition to a city of services, landscaping is the guarantor of the cultural heritage of the city, making the memory of the place emerge in the different interventions of urban transformation that take place.

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Neil Mattinson FLI

Senior Board Director, LDA Design We are seeing a growing appetite for landscape-led design in the UK and globally because of its capacity to deliver vibrant places where people feel a sense of belonging.

This surge in understanding of the benefits of this approach – that puts people first – is helping us to grow, making it a very exciting time for the practice. This year alone, we have opened three start-up offices

Samir Mathur

Principal landscape architect, Integral Designs Things are looking up for landscape architects in India, currently the world’s sixth-largest economy and an increasingly important investment hub. This economic growth has mostly been based on investment in infrastructure and urban development in the government sector, and hospitality, real estate and IT-enabled businesses in the private sector.

India used to attract small oneperson design firms, but now I see international behemoths like AECOM, Ramboll, Egis and others have set up shop in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.

in the UK: in Bristol, Cambridge and Manchester.

More and more opportunities are also coming our way from overseas – from Canada to New Zealand and the Middle East. Our profile in Russia is building following our work on Moscow’s Gorky Park and the masterplan for the Serp & Molot former industrial site, where a new city park is the catalyst for transformation. Last month, we won a design competition to develop a

More and more opportunities are coming our way from overseas.

It seems to be linked to international funds requiring project management and design audits by large firms. This is coupled with a strong and articulate local design presence and a generous talent pool based on international quality architectural educational institutions.

Often times, local expertise is simply not available for large projects.

As investment is flowing to the government sector, there is interest in new greenfield cities (Amravati), ecological greenways (Delhi is looking at 50 km of greenways), heritage development (Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi) and upgrading existing cities (India’s Smart Cities programme).

While the outlook for the growth of international landscape design offices is positive, architectural licences are not available for foreign nationals until reciprocal arrangements are in place.

The regulatory framework is getting more robust too. The National Building Code was rewritten in 2016 and is now one of the most farsighted codes in the world. In my hometown, the Delhi Urban Art Commission has been writing bylaws and guidelines for buildings, streets, parks, the upgrading

masterplan for Oktyabrsky Island in Kaliningrad, home of a 2018 World Cup stadium. Our landscape-led vision for Oktyabrsky draws the surrounding water deep into the site, with water taxis replacing cars where possible, creating a new model for city living that supports healthier and happier lifestyles.

We are also helping the Eden Project develop its first overseas venture – a new ecological park near Qingdao on the east coast of China.

Qingdao will harness Eden’s capacity, proven in Cornwall, to surprise and delight, while encouraging a better understanding of how to conserve precious resources. To help us capitalise further on these and other opportunities, we are now in the process of recruiting an international director. This appointment should stand us in good stead as uncertainties around Brexit continue.

of neighbourhoods and even for public art. It’s interesting to note that one per cent of any public building budget now goes towards public art in Delhi!

I have been teaching for two decades after graduating as an architect, and completing my postgraduate training as a landscape architect. I am currently a member of the Delhi Urban Art Commission, as well as the convenor for the section on landscape development for the National Building Code. Our firm is currently involved in more than 100 landscape projects in India. We are also the lead designers for projects in Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa and the Caribbean. After the saturation in China and Dubai, it does seem that India is set to be a design hub for the long run.

We are involved in more than 100 projects in India.

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Over the past decade, the Landscape Institute has produced a considerable body of work exploring the value of landscape. The latest manifestation of this was its Valuing Landscape Conference in 2018 co-hosted with IFLA in London.

For this issue, we asked three of our international conference speakers to write their take on how ‘value’ presents opportunities for the profession.

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By Jan Christian Vestre

Jan Christian Vestre is CEO of Vestre

Self-worth 1 & 2. Vestre furnitutre in public spaces. © Vestre Furniture

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Jan Christian Vestre, CEO of Vestre, offers a rallying call for landscape practitioners to become the superheroes of our age.

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e are facing climate change, a growing global population, urbanisation, migration and a technological revolution, and we must co‑operate if we’re to deal with the opportunities and challenges that they bring.

It’s vitally important to remind ourselves that it is our values, our set of ethical and moral norms, that define

how we will tackle this situation, and how well we will succeed. So, what does this mean in real terms for the landscape profession?

1 We must explain loudly and clearly to political and commercial decision-makers why it makes sound financial sense to create attractive and accessible outdoor urban spaces.

With more people living in cities and a more diverse population, it is obvious

that places for social interaction will be more important. In many countries, including the UK, budgets for the construction and maintenance of outdoor urban spaces have been cut to an absolute minimum. So we have a lot of work to do. We must speak in a way that other people understand and we must demonstrate – with practical examples – how we can help clients find solutions to their problems.

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2 We must stand up against the bizarre idea that the existence of accessible meeting places in towns and cities leads to anti-social behaviour. If a community experiences its young people falling by the wayside, dropping out of school, unable to get a job, it certainly can’t help if they sit cooped up alone at home every day becoming more and more frustrated.

It must be better to create a sense of

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belonging to the local community than to magnify their sense of exclusion.

That’s what will create a sense of belonging, and will enable us to change the world a little every day.

3 We must consistently refuse to accept hostile design. We must not let ourselves be used by political decisionmakers who want to offload their problems onto us. If the community

has homeless people sleeping in the parks at night, this is something that must be dealt with by social services.

It’s not the task of the landscape profession to design outdoor areas with spikes and other obstacles, the only purpose of which is to keep the weakest members of society away from our streets.

4 We must explain to the authorities that safer cities are not brought about by more armed police, more surveillance cameras, and the closure of more parks and communal areas.

It may create a feeling of safety, but this isn’t real safety, which is achieved when there are people in the streets, when people feel a sense of belonging, and when being in an urban environment together with others is an attractive proposition.

5 Finally, we must choose sustainable solutions, that produce the lowest possible greenhouse gas emissions and have the fewest possible negative consequences for the environment. We must explain to our clients that choosing quality at every stage in the process almost without exception proves to be the most cost-effective alternative in the long run, for them, for the taxpayer and the environment. What is cheapest to buy is often the most costly to put right after a period of normal wear and tear.

We all possess the tools, knowledge and experience we need to create more socially amenable, greener, safer and more inclusive towns. We know how we can tackle the big issues and are in a position to resolve some of the major challenges confronting our age – and exploit the opportunities that will undoubtedly follow.

That is why landscape and place professionals must have the selfconfidence to stand up for what they know is right, and take the place they deserve in the public debate and in society. Don’t let others decide how things will turn out. Be the ones to define the problem and provide the solution.

3 & 4. Vestre furnitutre in public spaces. © Vestre Furniture

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By Dr Mark Kristmanson

Dr Mark Kristmanson is chief executive officer of the National Capital Commission in Ottawa, Canada.

Canada’s Capital 1. The Canadian Parliament seen from the north shore of the Ottawa River. © NCC

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Dr Mark Kristmanson, chief executive officer of the National Capital Commission in Ottawa, explains how valuing landscape in practical ways is actually leading to a more feral, less manicured vision of sustainability.

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t is almost 50 years since Raymond Williams foreshadowed today’s ‘natural capital accounting’ with his call for economics to embrace ecology.

From personifications of nature as a goddess to Darwin’s natural selection, Williams traced a fateful scission: humans abstracting themselves from nature (to disavow

its over-exploitation) while idealising its purest form as a ‘wilderness’ untouched by human intrusion. ‘It will be ironic,’ Williams wrote, ‘if one of the last forms of the separation between abstracted Man and abstracted Nature is an intellectual separation between economics and ecology. It will be a sign that we are beginning to think in some necessary ways

when we can conceive of these [as] a single discipline.’1 At the recent Valuing Landscape conference [hosted by the LI in London] I discussed the introduction of natural capital accounting at Ottawa’s National Capital Commission (NCC) to safeguard 13 ecosystem services identified in a recent baseline study.2 Defining natural capital as ‘the stock

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of renewable and non-renewable resources that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people’, a research team led by Dr. Jérome Dupras mapped and classified the NCC’s 55,000 hectares according to Agriculture and Agrifood Canada’s 2014 land cover inventory: forests (72 per cent), agricultural lands (10 per cent), urban lands (8 per cent), wetlands (5 per cent) and freshwater systems (5 per cent). The basis for valuation was derived from market prices, replacement costs, and benefit transfer analyses drawing from 78 primary studies.

The NCC’s lands provide, on a regional scale: ‘provisioning services, including food and forage’; ‘regulating/ supporting services, including carbon storage, air quality, water provisioning, waste treatment, erosion control, pollination, habitats, flood mitigation, pest management, and the nutrient cycle’; and ‘cultural services’, adding value to recreation and tourism. The resulting benefits average CAD$332m (£194m) annually with a Net Present Value (NPV) of CAD$5B (£0.92bn) over 20 years. Most valuable are wetlands, followed by urban forests, rural forests, grasslands, agricultural lands and freshwater systems.

To be effective, the natural capital accounting of these services needs to be adopted across our organisation – from the landscape professionals to the Board of Directors – and it will eventually require new accounting standards.3 The NCC’s audit committee opened its discussion on reporting in winter 2017 and valuations are now being piloted at the project level. Our landscape professionals expect that natural capital accounting will make green compensation strategies more consistent and effective.

Already, their work indicates an emerging ‘landscape of sustainability’ that is more feral, less manicured, less structured, permeable, darker and quieter, with flora and fauna occupying interstices in the urban fabric, on roofs and in vegetal structures. Moving beyond pesticides, cultivars and monocultural allées, it is more resilient and indigenous in its ethos and aesthetic.

Paradoxically, this landscape is

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2. Land use cover of the National Capital Commission’s green network.

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© NCC

3. Ecosystem services value of NCC’s green network. © NCC

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Raymond Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso, 1980, 84. His essay “Ideas of Nature” is based on a 1971 lecture at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

2 Jérôme Dupras, Chloé L’Ecuyer-Sauvageau, Jeoffrey Auclair, Jie He, and Thomas Poder, Natural Capital: The Economic Value of the National Capital Commission’s Green Network. Ottawa: NCC, December 2016.

3 Canada’s Public Sector Accounting Board recently launched a process to develop this accounting standard, the Canadian System of Environmental and Resource Accounts (CSERA) is compiling detailed statistics, and Municipal Natural Assets Initiatives are underway in 11 communities across Canada.

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also the product of big data, remote sensing, monitoring, modelling, and simulation. Banishing the mysterious ‘northern incubus’ that once shaped the Canadian imagination, the landscape of sustainability is a ‘precision’ wilderness, taking its form from an ecological empiricism wherein economics align with indigenous perspectives.

A local elder told us that the concept of ‘sustainability’ is immanent in Algonquin culture and thus has no word. Non-indigenous Canadians may have forgotten their ancient estovers (taking wood for shelter), turbary (peat for heating) piscary (fish as a common

pool resource), pannage (pigs’ forage), and agistment (seasonal pasturing in forests), but natural capital accounting may reawaken the logic of this older economy.

For some critics, such accounting oversimplifies the complexity and interdependence of ecosystem services and risks legitimising further depletion.

That may or may not prove to be so, but I concur with Raymond Williams that ‘valuing landscape’ in practical and non-abstract accounting equally could become the emergent metaphor for a new landscape of sustainability.

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By Ursula Hartenberger

Ursula Hartenberger is global head of sustainability, RICS.

Pay it forward Why is it taking so long for sustainability to become a standard part of valuations?

Ursula Hartenberger, RICS global head of sustainability, takes the market to task.

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t has taken more than a decade for so-called ‘green’ sustainability features, – energy efficiency and carbon emissions, for example – to find their way into the traditional canon of property valuation parameters. And we are still far from being able to claim that it is standard industry practice to consider them when establishing the market value of an asset or when advising clients.

There are number of reasons for this. For a start, valuers typically reflect the market. In other words, their valuations are based on past information. By contrast, the forwardlooking nature of sustainability requires an assessment of what we call ‘future value impact’, which may be strongly influenced by a variety of future factors, such as ever more stringent regulatory frameworks, changes in client and market preferences, and the emergence of new technologies, to name but a few. So even if valuers do not ‘make the market’, it goes without saying, that their advice, and the nature and scope of their services, clearly influence property clients’ investment decision-making and thus market outcomes.

However, it would be unjust to solely blame valuers for the often rather sluggish pace of market transformation. After all, valuers are neither building surveyors nor engineers, and some sustainability features do require a basic technical knowledge and understanding of what may in the end influence the value of an asset. Raising awareness, supporting capacity-building tools in

the shape of guidance, training and a shift in the focus of education are crucial to overcoming this.

Numerous studies have shown that, in certain markets and submarkets, there are now clear signs that investments in sustainability have the potential to provide a better return in the long run. One barrier to this is that data on local markets is not always available, accessible or of a sufficiently good quality for valuers to rely on. Consistent data capture and management by market participants, including valuers themselves, and widely accepted industry metrics and data collection protocols are still the exception rather than the rule – and this applies to both emerging and more mature markets.

Integrating sustainability considerations into the valuation process, while often presented as such, is not rocket science. No matter whether the subject of valuation is a building, a piece of art, a public space or a nature reserve, valuing sustainability is always about applying quantitative evidence and qualitative judgement to new value-influencing features and improving market efficiency by providing accurate information to the marketplace. There is nothing radically new about this – qualitative judgement is needed in all valuation assignments – so sustainability features should be no exception to this.

Over the past decade, the list of material sustainability issues within the built environment has been constantly evolving. While initially sustainability was generally understood to be limited to environmental issues, social

CREATING BETTER PLACES

where more people want to live enhances financial value RICS research showed

A VALUE UPLIFT

5%

between and, in one case,

56%

value considerations are increasingly becoming part of investment strategies. Health, wellbeing, productivity and even happiness have now joined the more established environmental indicators (and value drivers), such as energy and water consumption and carbon reduction.

So, does adding ‘good space’ make a new or existing development more valuable? In its 2016 research publication Placemaking and value, RICS examined the relationship between placemaking and commercial value. The research found that creating better places where more people want to live enhances financial value and can secure substantial commercial premiums. The case studies that formed part of the research showed a value uplift of between 5 per cent and, in one exceptional case, 56 per cent.

This should not come as a surprise.

After all, ultimately it is the fulfilment of people’s preferences, aspirations and desires that attribute value to a development, a space and a location, and valuers need to reflect this.

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Thamesmead Peabody is delighted to have won the Landscape Institute Science, Management and Stewardship Award for the Thamesmead Estate Management Plan.

With its exceptional landscape, including more than 150 hectares of greenspace, 7km of canals and five lakes, Thamesmead has the potential to become a truly distinctive place to live, work and visit.

Our key goal is: We will make Thamesmead into one of London’s most bio-diverse and sustainable urban living environments; increasing the number of people who visit and enjoy Thamesmead’s unique parks and waterways.

Landscape design and management is central to Peabody’s 25-year plan to regenerate this iconic part of London, providing good quality affordable homes, working with communities and promoting wellbeing. www.thamesmeadnow.org.uk

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Vestre creates democratic and inclusive meeting places that bridge social and cultural divides – inviting and safe outdoor space that facilitates conversation and activity. Inspired by Nordic nature and simplicity, Vestre has been making lasting, quality outdoor furniture for generations.

Vestre strives to be the world’s most sustainable outdoor furniture manufacturer. So we never take shortcuts or compromise when it comes to material quality, lifespan and the environment.

Our products are manufactured only in Scandinavia, using top-quality materials, and Vestre is the first company to manufacture climateneutral outdoor furniture.

We dislike throwaway solutions.

The wild climate of Scandinavia has inspired us to develop products that require minimal maintenance, withstanding even the toughest environments, and our lengthy warranties are evidence of our commitment to designing for life.

Steel elements are warranted for life against corrosion; powder coating adhesion is warranted for 15 years; as is our timber against rot.

None of this comes at the expense of stunning design. We collaborate with leading Nordic designers and several of our ranges are award-winning. In addition to hot dip galvanised and corten finishes, our standard colours run to almost 200 (RAL Classic range). Our contemporary, colourful, and inclusive products appeal across many sectors and our extensive range is sufficiently diverse to offer choices for every project.

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BRIEFING

By Matthew Carmona

Matthew Carmona is Professor of Planning and Urban Design at The Bartlett School of Planning.

City crits

Does ‘design review’ as we know it exist outside the UK and, if so, who’s doing it best?

Professor Matthew Carmona takes a look at the past, present and future of design review models in England and beyond.

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P

ut simply, ‘design review’ is a peer review process for the design of built environment projects. Globally, it is an increasingly prominent tool in the design governance toolbox, where it is typically offered as a public service.

The ‘modernisation’ of public services has been much written about as a key tenet of the neoliberal state. Such processes encompass the withdrawal of the state, the commodification of services, the introduction of competition and market mechanisms, and the general embedding of business interests into previous state functions. In England, between 2011 and 2018, design review was subject to such a change. It moved from a publicly funded service dominated – although not exclusively delivered – by a single national agency and became a typically privately funded activity that a diverse group of market providers compete to deliver. This occurs alongside local authorities that have taken the service in-house.

Formal and informal models Looking globally, different models of design review exist. In the US, design review is typically a ‘formal’ tool of design governance in that it is sanctioned in statute with a formal regulatory role. It is a relatively recent phenomena, originating in the 1950s, but not gaining traction until the 1980s.

By 1994, Brenda Case Scheer was able to report that 83% of towns had some form or review, although with wildly varying practice and no national co-ordination. Her findings showed that 82% of design review processes in the US were mandatory and legislated, as opposed to advisory.

Case Sheer’s analysis gave rise to a withering set of critiques around the potential for design review to be arbitrary, inconsistent, expensive, easily manipulated, under-skilled, subjective, vague, unfair, uncreative and superficial. In the years since, these critiques of design review have been somewhat addressed by

extending its remit beyond a narrow regulatory function. Twenty years after Case Scheer’s findings, for example, Mark Schuster concluded that design review in the US had the potential to act in many ways: like a jury, a peerpanel review, a building inspector; as a mediator, an expert decision-maker, a facilitator a professional support group; or as a planning consultant, expediter and educator.

Panels such as those created in Auckland, New Zealand, and Vancouver, Canada, have demonstrated the potential of this extended remit. In both cities design review has been used to provide early and constructive advice to developers on specific development proposals; to advise their respective cities on policy and guidance frameworks; and generally to champion good design across the professional establishment and community at large. Auckland (pictured) is rapidly developing a reputation for design quality, all underpinned by the work of a longstanding design review panel whose remit extends from buildings to public realm and to stimulating the culture for better design generally in the city.

In Auckland and Vancouver, the link between the design review function and formal regulatory processes is less clear-cut, with design review being used more as a formative critique as opposed to a summative evaluation. This is a model that has precedents in the US, including notably the Commission of Fine Arts, which since 1910, has, by order of Congress, been advising on design in the District of Columbia.

In the UK, design review has an even longer history dating back to the 1802 Committee of Taste and, throughout this time, has doggedly remained informal in nature, outside statutory regulatory frameworks.

Used in this manner, informal design review is an evaluation tool focused on improving the design quality of developments before they obtain formal regulatory consent. This is an approach developed through decades of national government directly funding

design review through the auspices of the Royal Fine Art Commission and then the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and its associated regional network of Architecture and Built Environment Centres (ABECs).

Integrated and separated models Formal and informal design review processes map onto a further conceptual distinction relating to whether the evaluation of design quality in planning happens in an integrated or separated manner.

In separated models, decisions on design are deliberately split from other planning or development concerns, with a separate statutory body – such as a design review board or commission – responsible for reviewing design. This either makes a binding recommendation to the zoning or planning board, or grants a separate design consent itself. Such arrangements are widespread in the US, where a formal process of design review often sits alongside, but separate from, zoning. Under such circumstances the promoters of projects are compelled to undergo design review and, arguably, design issues will consistently receive an appropriate weighting before development approval is given or refused.

A shortcoming, however, is the difficulty in making the necessary connections between design and other development issues, some of which – such as decisions on landuse zoning, density, and transport or infrastructure provision – have major design implications. Here the danger is that consideration of design is reduced to ‘mere aesthetics’ throwing the legitimacy of such processes into question.

In ‘integrated’ models, design is typically treated as an integral part of wider planning and/or zoning processes. If we take the UK, for example, judgements about the acceptability of design are ultimately 21

BRIEFING

Integrated consideration of planning and design

made by local planning authorities, who may or may not seek the advice of an ‘independent’ design review panel, but who ultimately are responsible for weighing and balancing the advice received against other factors, and determining the weight that should be given to it in the formal decision-making process. In such a system, design review has no formal status and developers are not obliged to submit their projects to its scrutiny.

Nor are planning authorities obliged to take design advice on board or even to seek it in the first place (although since 2012 they have been strongly encouraged to do so in the National Planning Policy Framework).

The danger of the integrated model is that design becomes sidelined by other factors and sometimes may barely be considered at all. There is also a danger that, in straitened times, processes that are not tied in to the legislative decision-making framework can quickly and easily be chopped out in order to make some rapid savings, or perhaps hived off to the market to provide. This is what occurred in England in 2011, leading to the ‘marketisation’ of design review.

Learning the lessons Today, a successful market for design review does seem to be operating, but it is small, specialised and not nearly as lucrative as some had hoped it would be. It is, however, conducting far more design review than was ever delivered when design review was a state function alone, and on that basis the marketisation of design review might be judged a success.

When compared internationally, the situation in England provides a rare example of such marketisation in design governance services, and one that may have limited application elsewhere (even in other parts of the UK). This is because, in England, design review is delivered through an ‘informal’ (discretionary) but integrated process, within a strong national policy framework. In other words, for

22

the market to work, there needs to be enough flexibility in the system to enable parallel, competing and non-binding models and providers of design review to operate. But there also needs to be enough authority and/or incentive to ensure that developers feel it is in their best interest to participate (and pay for design review), and that municipalities should back its provision through ensuring that it occurs. Crudely, there also needs to be enough business to sustain such an approach.

Comparing the situation with that in the US and elsewhere, the English system has the potential benefit that design review is no longer constrained by limited public-sector funding but can grow and adapt to meet demand locally. It has the drawback that, where design is not prioritised or simply poorly understood, the process does not happen, and there is no longer a national agency in an authoritative position to ensure it does.

For design professionals, the benefits of design review are potentially significant, as recent research on the subject – Reviewing Design Review in London (Place Alliance, 2018) – reveals. Foremost among these is the important benefit of helping to change the culture and demand for good design locally, at no significant cost to the public purse.

Consequently, where it does not currently occur, professionals should be asking why, and should encourage all local authorities to get on board.

It seems no accident that, in England, the growth of design review has occurred most rapidly and with the greatest degree of innovation in London, precisely where the concentration of development and municipal authorities (the boroughs) and therefore market opportunities are greatest. The regions are following more slowly behind, with providers often serving large geographic territories in order to generate enough business. But where London leads, others are likely to follow towards a rapidly maturing market in design review across the country.

DEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL

Planning officers

Design advisory panel

Recommendation

Recommendation

Planning committee

DECISION Appeal

National/state procedures/courts

Separated planning or zoning and design review

DEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL

DEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL

Planners/zoning professionals

Design review planners

Recommendation

Recommendation

Commission/ administrative approval

Design review board

DECISION

DECISION

Appeal

Appeal

National/state procedures/courts

-

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BRIEFING

By Debbie Bartlett and Sarah Milliken

Dr Debbie Bartlett CMLI is a landscape architect and ecologist, and leads the MSc programme in Environmental Conservation at the University of Greenwich.

Dr Sarah Milliken is a landscape architect and research assistant in the School of Design at the University of Greenwich.

Character matters 1

How can landscape character and ecosystem services assessment be integrated into land‑use planning in India? Debbie Bartlett and Sarah Milliken at the University of Greenwich share their experiences of Gujarat, the country’s second most industrialised state.

D

eveloping countries offer opportunities to introduce integrated approaches to land-use planning before the industrialisation process adversely affects the environment. India has seen a marked increase in both population and industrial activity in recent years, and while positive consequences include improved communications and literacy, poorly planned growth has exacerbated social inequalities, damaged the environment, and compromised the delivery of ecosystem services.

The state of Gujarat is the second most industrialised state in India and its rapid development has had a marked impact on the environment and, consequently, on local communities, since 45% of households depend on natural resource-based livelihoods such as transhumant pastoralism, agriculture and fishing. Incentives for development introduced after the 2001 earthquake,

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which killed more than 18,000 people and devastated the region, have resulted in rapid industrialisation, particularly along the coast.

A lack of consideration of social and environmental factors in the planning process has increased the vulnerability of communities to climate change. Fish production has decreased dramatically, with pollution

and destruction of mangroves being the likely causes. Industrial plants also consume large quantities of freshwater which, combined with a change in rainfall patterns, has contributed to a fall in the water table and resulted in the incursion of seawater into freshwater reservoirs.

This has reduced crop productivity and negatively affected grassland quality

1. Focus group discussion at Ashira Vandh. © Dr Sarah Milliken

2 & 3. The results for each village were displayed on posters, with photographs taken during the initial visit and text in both English and Gujarati. © Dr Sarah Milliken

Our aim was to explore the potential for introducing landscape character and ecosystem services assessment to land-use planning in India.

for grazing livestock. The cumulative impact is pressure on local people to leave the area.

Our aim was to explore the potential for introducing landscape character and ecosystem services assessment to land-use planning in India, using Kachchh district in Gujarat as a case study. The Natural Character Area approach has proved effective in England and has been adopted by the government as part of the ‘access to evidence’ initiative to inform planning decisions.

Landscape character is based on biophysical and cultural factors rather than administrative boundaries. Natural Character Area profiles describe natural and cultural features, explain how and why the landscape has changed, and identify drivers likely to influence future change. These documents identify opportunities based on analysis of ecosystem services, and provide a robust context for land-use decisionmaking, by informing the development agenda while minimising negative impacts on the environment.

The initial phase involved detailed desk-based study, gathering together physical, biological and socioeconomic data to identify areas within Kachchh that have similar characteristics.

Topographical, geological and soil maps were used in combination with remote sensing imagery to reveal land cover and how this has changed over time. The literature was reviewed to amass information on livelihoods and socioeconomic factors as well as natural attributes such as ecological communities and designated areas.

This combination provided the basis for our fieldwork using the Landscape Character Assessment methodology developed by the Countryside Commission, updated

by Natural England, and the more recent technical advice published by the Landscape Institute. Field sheets were used to record features such as topography, land cover, land use, and cultural and natural heritage. The combination of the field and desk studies enabled us to identify eight distinct natural areas and one of these, the coastal plain, was chosen for further study.

Field notes Eight villages were selected from different parts of the coast and these were profiled with respect to population size, cultural composition and literacy levels, while land-cover change was determined using remote sensing satellite imagery. Focus group discussions were held during the summer of 2015 to corroborate the information amassed and to gather local views on landscape change to enable an evaluation of the ecosystem services.

The results for each village were displayed on posters, with photographs taken during the initial visit and text in both English and Gujarati. The posters were taken on a return visit to each village in December 2015 and were

used to record comments and correct any misunderstandings. We also took posters showing the land cover change but they was unsuccessful as the participants, although familiar with their locality, were simply not used to the ‘bird’s eye view’ – a learning experience for us.

The ecosystem services assessment enabled strategic objectives to be identified; these balance the priorities of ensuring the livelihoods of local stakeholders while at the same time maintaining important habitats and native wildlife. The results form a working document which we believe could be used as a model for extending this approach to other natural areas in Kachchh and further afield.

2

3

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PROJECTS

By Dr Wei Deng CMLI

Big ambition Dr Wei Deng is a principal landscape architect at AECOM.

The 2018 Landscape Institute Awards were the first to invite international submissions in a new category, the Dame Sylvia Crowe Award. The LI invited Dr Wei Deng, one of 2018’s judges, to give his analysis of what the entries say about the global health of the profession, and we profile the 10 projects that made the judges’ shortlist.

1

I

n 2018, the Landscape Institute launched its first-ever international award, named after Dame Sylvia Crowe (1901–1997), one of the most influential landscape architects in the mid-to-late 20th century. She led the development and promotion of the landscape profession in the UK as well as internationally. The name of the award reflects Sylvia Crowe’s substantial contribution and indicates that the entries are required to exhibit an outstanding international contribution to people, places and nature. I was extremely honoured to be a part of the judging panel and to witness one of the most memorable milestones in the awarding history of the Landscape Institute. After two hectic days of judging, I would like to share some of my experiences and thoughts.

We set high standards for the entries. The applications were expected to be top-quality landscapeled projects that not only present major achievements that benefit the physical outdoor environment, but also serve as exemplary cases for promoting the landscape profession worldwide. In light of this principle, more detailed criteria were applied and discussed throughout the judging process. The jury mainly focused on three aspects: first, the entry should make a unique and outstanding contribution that improves outcomes for people, places and nature; second, it should represent the best practice outcomes for the profession of landscape design and exhibit great involvement and contribution from relevant professionals; and third, the contribution of the entry should be

26

well recognised by third parties in order to provide support. International recognition and contribution to the landscape profession is probably is the key aspect that differentiates the Dame Sylvia Crowe Award from the other Landscape Institute awards.

We received entries from Asia, Australia, Europe and Africa. Around half of these came from the People’s Republic of China, which reflects the rapid pace of development and plethora of projects executed in this country in recent years. Privately owned landscape practices dominated the applicants. However, we also received several entries from the public sector, including the Countryside Commission (operated between 1968–1999) that was submitted by Natural England for its unique and outstanding contribution to improving

the outcomes for the affiliated landscape and people. In the future, we would welcome submissions from individuals and organisations globally, given that the entries demonstrate excellence and leadership in the global field of landscape and place.

Landscape operates at all scales and locations Landscape architecture is defined as a discipline that aims to enhance and protect all types of outdoor spaces, regardless of the size or location. The submissions reflected this and exhibit extremely different locations for projects, from public space enhancement to remote villages in untouched mountains and contemporary amenity parks for office buildings in busy city centres.

1 & 2. Quarry Garden in Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden (see p.30).

We received entries from Asia, Australia, Europe and Africa.

The submissions also covered an extremely wide range of scales, from the several hundred square metres of the ‘Rice Garden’ in Shanghai to the Pearl River delta scheme that spans thousands of square kilometres. The 220-hectare Yulong Park projects in Fuxin New City, China, successfully integrates the urban spatial and economic growth with ecological enhancement. It improves the relationships between the existing mountains, rivers and the proposed urban extension areas. In terms of small scale projects, the Ian Potter Children’s Wild Play Garden in Australia demonstrates how landscape practitioners can incorporate native nature into their design to create ‘Wild Play’. It only covers 0.65 hectares but is full of surprises and encourages children’s imaginations to run wild.

These projects demonstrate how landscape practitioners understand and respect the laws of nature at different scales and then use these resources to improve nature and the built environment.

Landscape combines art and technical innovations It is not difficult to see that sustainability is one of the key goals for most landscape-led schemes, irrespective of whether they use traditional or cutting-edge techniques. The actual challenges are always associated with implementing the appropriate techniques and achieving outcomes while retaining outstanding aesthetic value. The ‘Quarry Garden’ in Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Gardens is one of the best examples of such a combination of artistic ambitions and technical innovations, transforming an unpleasant, abandoned and polluted place into an attractive leisure destination.

This project is extremely rich in technical achievements: the unstable cliffs of the quarry were assessed and mitigated; contaminated water and soils were treated and improved; the flora was carefully selected and designed to match native species; and new footpaths were carefully built and laid out to take visitors

through a journey full of beautiful views and vibrant spatial experiences, which borrow aesthetic philosophy from Chinese traditional paintings.

‘Gardens by the Bay’ in Singapore, another multi-awarded botanic garden, is also an outstanding project that demonstrates how landscape architects can push imagination to its limit by creating a series of beautiful man-made ‘tree skyscrapers’. Cuttingedge techniques have been used to reflect the local climate, ensure healthy growth of the plant species and achieve a sustainable scheme.

Landscape encourages community engagement The landscape profession is not only concerned with the natural environment but also pays close attention to the social aspects of communities. From a large number of submissions we can see that public engagements have been well used and form an important aspect of the design process. The project ‘New Life in Hutongs’, a public space renovation

27

project in Beijing, China, revealed an innovative approach to engaging local residents. It precisely addresses the social and physical problems, then mitigates the issues within a limited timeframe and budget. The project successfully transformed a series of derelict public spaces into attractive locations within a well-linked, nonvehicular movement network. Hutong residents are therefore encouraged to go outside and meet in these outdoor ‘living rooms’. As such, the sense of local identity has been clearly highlighted and strengthened.

Singapore’s first ‘Themed Public Playground’ scheme was designed and built by the local community. This means that, in this case, engaging local groups was even used as the main design mechanism there.

3. The Block (see p.30).

4. Wangjing Soho Parks (see p.30).

2

Landscape to lead sustainable growth From the entries this year, it is easy to conclude that landscape, as a profession, has become increasingly important for creating healthier natural and built environments in the world. In many cases, landscape practitioners are gradually paving the way for growth in both developed and developing countries, particularly for city regeneration, urban extension, environmental restoration and publicspace schemes.

This fast-changing world is pushing landscape practitioners to the frontline to face challenges in the near future.

This means landscape architecture has become a much more comprehensive profession than ever before. We will have to ensure that we are armed with a broad spectrum of knowledge and that we are competent enough to deal with climate change, shortage of natural resources, environmental pollution and potential economic crises.

After building a stronger co-operative relationship with other disciplines, I believe landscape architecture will lead the way in supporting the ‘big ambition’ of sustainable growth.

It was a gratifying to see that this was partially achieved within some of the submissions this year, no matter how small the projects were.

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3

4

This fastchanging world is pushing landscape practitioners to the frontline to face challenges in the near future.

The shortlist We profile the judges’ top 10 projects from the Dame Sylvia Crowe Award 2018.

WINNER

QUARRY GARDEN Location: Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, Chenshan Hill, China Credits: Yufan Zhu studio, Beijing Tshinghua Urban Planning & Design Institute; Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University.

Located at the core of Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, Chenshan Hill is a rare scenic spot in the suburbs of Shanghai, with a long and rich history. Quarrying began at the site at the beginning of the last century and continued until the 1980s. In 2007, with the construction of Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, the Ministry of Land and Resources of the People’s Republic of China approved funding to perform comprehensive environmental management of the quarry.

The team behind the project were inspired by the concept of “Taoyuan”

(an ideal paradigm of East Asian natural landscape). Through this idea, the designers employed modern design methods to create a series of attractions, re-establishing the connection between human beings and the natural landscape.

The project is a great example of the reclamation of a quarry. It takes into account the constraints

of the site and transforms them into opportunities.. The project not only considers recreation but also the ecological recuperation of its location.

The use of materials, such a stones, and the consideration of the orography, facilitates the integration of the work.

The team created a design that takes into account the micro-, meso- and macro-aspects of the project.

between cities and the village.

The garden also has an online presence charting the progress and development with videos and interactive social media content.

The interaction between different agents (students, professionals, citizens) and the expansion of the design into the digital world

demonstrates the emphasis on the inter-relationship between people, nature and place. The garden changes every year, making it an ongoing experience, which, if monitored each season, could help to better understand the interaction of people with different open spaces.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

RICE GARDEN Location: Jianshe village, Jianshen, Chongming Island, Shanghai, China Credits: College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Innovation Urban Green, Farming Club.

Rice Garden is a temporary agricultural garden landscape that is constructed on the same rice field every year. The designs were created by teachers and students from colleges and universities and by landscape architects. The designers do subtraction design on the harvest land every year and invite local children, young people and older people to participate in its construction. The project is a combination of a traditional agricultural landscape with an agriculture-friendly model of sustainability. It has promoted the integration and communication

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HIGHLY COMMENDED

WANGJING SOHO PARKS Location: Wangjing, China.

Credits: Ecoland Planning and Design Inc., SOHO China, Zaha Hadid Architects

The brief set the challenge of delivering a mixed-use commercial complex in a densely populated area of Beijing. The project called for a backyard oasis in which people could interact with each other and with nature, making it a pinnacle destination for local workers and residents in the booming Wangjing district.

The result, Wangjing SOHO, has become one of the most recognised locations in Beijing. Its park structures include a fountain plaza, a curvilinear bridge, botanic pathways and an amphitheatre. These designs have also vastly improved the environmental quality of the site by providing ecosystem services such as filtering rainwater, absorbing air pollutants and

assisting in mitigating the urban heat island effect.

Wangjing SOHO demonstrates an exemplary high-quality finished public space that compliments its associated office buildings. The design harmoniously reflects the unique architectural style of the associated buildings designed by Zaha Hadid

Architects. The space is inviting and has stimulated public use and interaction. The international character of the project demonstrated a clear and admirable collaboration between the architects, the landscape design practice and the contractors in China.

quay-stones abandoned at the site during the construction of the adjacent Dubai Water Canal. The use of such local materials not only served to reduce environmental impacts of the construction process, but critically to help define a new, locally-relevant palette of landscape materials. The Block provides a successful case study

advocating the incorporation of native materials within landscapes.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

THE BLOCK Location: Dubai Design District, Dubai UAE Credits: desert INK / Desert Group, Tecom, Dubai Design District, Proscape, Parsons

The Block provides a great example of how site-found waste materials can be successfully used to create both character and function within a public landscape. This awardwinning urban park project was constructed to provide the primary outdoor recreational space for the Dubai Design District (d3), while simultaneously drawing in visitors from outside the community to explore this new urban district. The design was shaped by the environmental and climatic conditions of Dubai.

The composition of the elements both exploited and moderated the challenging conditions, combining sunny areas with shady spaces. desert INK seized the opportunity to use more than 700 surplus concrete

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SHORTLISTED

THE IAN POTTER CHILDREN’S WILD PLAY GARDEN Location: Centennial Parklands, Sydney, Australia.

Credits: ASPECT Studios, Botanic Gardens & Centennial Parklands, Sam Crawford Architects, Cave Urban, Design Landscapes, Fleetwood Urban

The project vision for the Ian Potter Children’s WILD PLAY Garden was to create a children’s garden comprising dedicated natural spaces to inspire and encourage young people to engage in exciting, creative and imaginative outdoor activities.

WILD PLAY is a botanical wonderland nestled within the grand tree-lined avenues and rolling hills of Sydney’s Centennial Parklands.

Created as a counterpoint to an increasingly dense and digitalised urban life, WILD PLAY is immersive experience. It’s rich with plants and sculpture, and encourages young imaginations to run wild.

The project draws on a range of environmental research from educators and organisations that highlights the importance of nature in the development of resilient, creative, compassionate and healthy children.

The site is one of Sydney’s most densely vegetated landscapes in an urban area, with over 13,000 trees, shrubs, succulents, grasses and groundcovers planted. Of the 22 tree

and 57 understorey species used, more than half are native to Australia.

ASPECT Studios led the design team from competition through to completion. The project illustrates how landscape architecture can inspire in children a deep love and respect of nature, ultimately leading to advocacy and stewardship of natural systems and a more resilient and harmonious future.

The biggest challenge for the landscape architects was reducing the negative impact of the Three Gorges Reservoir hydro-fluctuation zone on the urban waterfront landscape, which would seasonally be flooded.

The project team took this constraint and turned it into a benefit. Through their innovative design, they created resilient landscapes which adapt to

the change of reservoir water level, providing new public spaces and significantly improving the quality of the county town.

The project has become a example for the waterfront green belt of Yunyang, and also offers a reference for other cities along the Three Gorges Reservoir.

SHORTLISTED

YUNYANG BEACH AND WATER GARDEN Location: Yunyang County Town, China Credits: Beijing Forestry University / Atelier DYJG

Yunyang County Town is located on the bank of the Three Gorges Reservoir. Over the 20 years since its original construction, the pre-existing parks along the waterfront area of the town had become outdated and underused.

As a response, local government officials wanted to construct a coherent system of waterfront parks and greenways in the area. The landscape architects’ strategy aimed to strengthen the connection between the town and the waterfront, improving the quality of the landscape, while also providing a variety of social functions in a new and vibrant waterfront.

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SHORTLISTED

GARDENS

BY THE BAY Location: Marina Bay, Singapore Credits: Grant Associates

The project brief set three challenges: to create a worldclass tropical garden that would become a global attraction, to deliver a garden that would become a favourite destination for Singaporeans, and to showcase the world of plants to its visitors.

The Gardens by the Bay’s design provides waterside walkways, themed gardens, play areas and a major outdoor performance space, all within a garden setting. The centrepieces of the gardens are two cooled conservatories; a flower dome containing a collection of plants from mediterranean regions, and a unique ‘Cloud Forest’ displaying tropical plants from montane regions. Another singular aspect are the 18 ‘Supertrees’, ranging between 25 and 50 metres

in height, which offer spectacular vertical gardens while also performing significant environmental functions.

Grant Associates led and co‑ordinated the design team for the whole project from competition to completion. The Gardens by the Bay showcase the work of landscape architects at an international level, and demonstrate the importance

of well-planned and designed open space within the fabric of dense urban developments. The project exemplifies the potential for integrated environmental planning and design.

Many of the principles and techniques used in the delivery of the gardens have the potential for wider application in urban and landscape planning around the world.

conservation and recreation experts) works closely with a wide range of other professionals, forming strong working relationships.

The Commission has formed alliances across the public sector – in particular with local authorities and the voluntary sector – and also with private owners and land managers. On average two-thirds

of its government funding went towards grant-aided projects with these partners. Its flexible programme approach enables the Commission to advance countryside policy and practice. The work of the Countryside Commission – its ideas and approaches, as well as their challenges – are reflected both nationally and internationally.

SHORTLISTED

COUNTRYSIDE COMMISSION Location: Nationwide across the UK Credits: Countryside Commission

2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the Countryside Commission, the non-departmental public body set up to champion the landscape and public enjoyment of the countryside. Over the years, the Countryside Commission has made an outstanding contribution to the ongoing improvement of landscapes in rural areas.

The Commission runs many initiatives and programmes and makes this public information, such as guidance publications and training, a central part of its work. Many of the Commission’s proposals have been ahead of their time at publication and subsequently adopted as wider government policy. This small multidisciplinary agency of landscape professionals (architects, planners,

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SHORTLISTED

LANDSCAPE PLANNING AND DESIGN OF YULONG PARK IN THE NEW CITY Location: Fuxin City, China Credits: Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Urban Planning and Design Institute

In August 2010, Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Urban Planning and Design Institute was commissioned to handle the landscape planning around the Jiuyingzi River in Fuxin City. Yulong Park was the first phase of the core area of the Yulong New City project.

The team designed fitness trails and small public squares interspersed with natural plants and open spaces, designed to incorporate existing vegetation. The demands of nearby residents were taken into account with the design and creation of activity spaces. In the open space around the

lake, the designers added tree-shaded plazas which have multiple functions, such as commerce, leisure, recreation and fitness. They utilised the site’s flood bank as the main road of the park, forming a dragon-shaped, nonmotorised traffic system.

Yulong Park has become the green urban living room for Fuxin City. The park provides an ecological barrier for

Fuxin City and a recreational park for residents. The project has also became a catalyst for urban investment, adding greater value to the region. Yulong Park has directly improved Fuxin City, as well as increasing the happiness index of local residents. It has played a profound role in the sustainable development of the new city.

selected various sites for the design of ‘micro-spaces’, which would include gardens, squares, playgrounds and installations. In these chosen microspaces, they created temporary developments and facilities. Soon local residents were requesting permanent refurbishments and expressing their hopes that similar renovation designs

would be instigated in the wider area.

The project reimagines the traditional urban area of the Hutongs.

It aims to revive and provide a sustainable renewal of the public space with a scheme which could be replicated across Beijing.

SHORTLISTED

NEW LIFE IN HUTONGS Location: Jingshan District of Beijing, China Credits: Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Urban Planning and Design Institute

The Jingshan District is a traditional block in the old city of Beijing. Historically, the Hutongs (narrow streets commonly associated with Beijing) have provided significant public spaces for the residents of the city. Since the middle of the 20th century, the rapid increase in population, cars and private property have reduced the Hutongs to congested parking areas.

This project explores the possibility of landscape architecture intervening in traditional high-density urban centres.

Through extensive research, the team collected and analysed data from local residents and organisations to study the public use of these spaces. During this research period, the designers

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Intervening in the city City governments are starting to change their policy, practice and approach to landscape in response to environmental, societal and economic challenges. These shifts are opening up opportunities for landscape practitioners to flex their muscles in new areas of pressing concern. We look at four cities: Singapore, Beijing, Antwerp and Barcelona.

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1. Nanjing Vertical Forest by Stefano Boeri Architects. © StefanoBoeriArchitetti

2 & 3. Bishan Ang Mo Kio Park, Singapore. © Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl

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Hot out there Taking the heat out of Singapore

By Clare Dowdy

UHI effect can raise temperatures by up to 7°C.

The park was on a floodplain in 1988.

Overheating city-dwellers can point the finger of blame at their airconditioning units. ‘The advent of air-conditioning led to a revolution in urban design, which made large cities possible even in the hottest climates,’ explains Dr Conrad H Philipp, senior researcher at the Singapore-ETH Centre.

Few concrete jungles are feeling landscape architect at Ramboll Studio the effects as intensely as tropical Dreiseitl, the engineering, design and Singapore – the world’s second most consultancy firm founded in Denmark densely populated country. Here, the and responsible for a number of recent urban heat island (UHI) effect can urban resilience projects in Singapore. raise temperatures by up to seven Philipp, co-ordinator of Cooling degrees Celsius.

Singapore, echoes this view: ‘While So in 2017, Cooling Singapore was the UHI is a problem for Singapore, set up, an ambitious initiative funded it also presents opportunities, by the National Research Foundation. since many cities in the tropics Its aim: to remove heat from the urban and subtropics are facing the same system and thereby improve outdoor problems. Looking ahead, Singapore thermal comfort. A cross-institutional can become a knowledge hub for effort, it includes stakeholders from urban-climate design and technology, government, the private sector and with solutions developed here being academia, which is represented by applied in other cities in the region.’ professors and researchers from the The Cooling Singapore team National University of Singapore, believes that progress towards SMART (Singapore-MIT Alliance reducing the UHI is possible, but for Research and Technology), and will require a ‘whole of government’ TUMCREATE (established by the approach. ‘This is because the Technical University of Munich). necessary measures have implications If Singapore can create an effective for many different areas of road map to tackle these problems, responsibility, including energy policy, it could lead the way for others. transport, building standards, planning, ‘The new principles of urban climate and public health,’ says Philipp. design are being developed now The team’s recommendations and Singapore has the opportunity include a variety of mitigation to become a world leader in this strategies, some of them directly emerging field,’ says Leonard Ng, or indirectly relevant to landscape

professionals. Green roofs and vertical greenery to prevent sunlight from heating up buildings; ponds on roofs or ground floors to help prevent the overheating of urban surfaces; trees and other shading devices, such as canopies, blinds or shutters, installed outside or inside, on or around the building envelope; light-coloured surfaces or reflective materials on roads, roofs and building façades to reduce the effect of sunlight heating up urban areas; and varying building heights and building forms to improve wind capture.

While Cooling Singapore works on a roadmap to guide policy and help co-ordinate long-term efforts to 2050, Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl can already point to two success stories in the city state. In 2012, the firm redesigned the popular Bishan Ang Mo Kio Park as part of the long-term Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) Programme, whose aim is to transform the country’s water bodies beyond their functions of drainage and water supply, into vibrant spaces for community bonding and recreation.

The park was on a floodplain in 1988. Running through it was Kallang

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River, a straight, fenced-in, 2.7km-long, concrete drainage channel that acted as a dividing line between the park and community. It was also in dire need of an upgrade. The firm suggested breaking the canal and restoring the river, which now meanders for 3.2km through the park’s 62 hectares. This move exceeded the targeted carrying capacity, yet cost 15% less than a redesigned concrete canal would have done.

‘The presence of the river assists in the reduction of humidity through evaporative cooling,’ says Ng, while ‘the park’s greenery not only helps with the green footprint of Singapore, it also triggers a massive evapotranspiration process which can help cool the area.’

More recently, the firm has upgraded

Kampung Admiralty, a 0.9-hectare old people’s housing development into a ‘vertical village’. The scheme features 610 trees and 80,000 shrubs on a 3600m2 roof area, giving a contiguous horizontal canopy which creates microclimates and dissipates the UHI effect. Meanwhile the ‘eco-pond’ is intended to help promote a natural cooling effect within the building.

Neither development was based on a Cooling Singapore plan, but rather on a Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) plan, which offers solutions for urban areas facing climate change challenges by connecting urban hydrological functions with urban nature, landscape design and planning.

Ng says of the BGI plan: ‘These green systems, such as a rain garden,

can perform evapotranspiration and cool the air, while the trees are canopies that can block the sun’s radiation and cool the ground. All these natural elements at various sites in Singapore will definitely provide cooling effects to the city.’

Singapore demonstrates that landscape practitioners should push for heat-reducing elements in their schemes. ‘It is our role to integrate and propose these cooling strategies and more in developments wherever possible, as the world warms,’ believes Ng. In the meantime, citizens could take a leaf out of Singapore Cooling’s book of recommendations on reducing energy consumption and introduce energy-efficient AC units.

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Clean air acts Tackling air pollution in Beijing

By Debika Ray

In response to China’s struggles to preserve its natural environment, President Xi Jinping has said that ‘green mountains and clear water are equal to mountains of gold and silver’.

Wealth certainly has accompanied rising vehicle ownership, has increased the country’s rapid industrialisation the levels of small particulates, and urbanisation since the 1980s, but known as PM2.5, to dangerous levels. the side effect has been aggressive Meanwhile, the growth in the city’s ecological degradation, in particular population and the squeeze on open toxic levels of air pollution. In the capital and green space has resulted in its Beijing, for example, the combined downtown area becoming an urban heat effect of nearby coal-fired power island, with the temperature several stations and steel plants, as well as degrees above that of the suburbs.

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By 2020, the government has pledged to reduce air pollution in Beijing by 40% from 2013 levels. Its efforts to encourage a switch to natural gas and electric vehicles have led to an improvement in air quality, but there is still a long way to go, which is why it has also outlined an ambitious plan to reshape the city itself, through a combination of urban planning and landscape design.

‘What [the Chinese government] has done until now is simply to continue to add new peripheral environments to cities,’ Italian architect Stefano Boeri, the man behind Milan’s greenery-clad residential building Bosco Verticale, told The Guardian

The scheme features 610 trees and 80,000 shrubs.

4. This image of Milano Bosco Verticale shows what Boeri hopes to achieve in Najing but on a much bigger scale. © DavidePiras

5. Nanjing Vertical Forest by Stefano Boeri Architects. © StefanoBoeriArchitetti

Government pledges to reduce pollution by 40% within the decade.

Government aims for central Beijing to be surrounded by hills, green belt and dotted with parks by 2020.

4,022 hectares of urban green space and 89,333 hectares of forest have been added since 2012.

last year. ‘They have created these nightmares – immense metropolitan environments. They have to imagine a new model of city that is not about extending and expanding but a system of small, green cities.’ Boeri’s own proposal is for a series of ‘forest cities’ around China, whose buildings will be adorned with trees and plants that will absorb pollutants, produce oxygen, reduce temperatures within buildings and increase biodiversity. The first of these is set to complete as soon as 2020.

When it comes to Beijing itself, the Urban Master Plan for the city announced plans in 2017 to limit the city’s population to 23 million by 2020 – a goal that will be achieved partly by moving some of the capital’s functions to other nearby cities and developing new urban centres on its outskirts.

Critics have observed that this has so far resulted in many homes and businesses occupied by low-income and migrant workers being razed, but Beijing’s population is already beginning to fall.

This then leaves more room for greenery. By 2020, the government is aiming for central Beijing to be surrounded by hills and a green belt and dotted with parks, and for it to be a ‘national forest city’ by 2025.

According to the state-run newswire Xinhua, 4,022 hectares of urban green space and 89,333 hectares of forest have been added since 2012, and in 2018 there are plans for five urban forests, 21 small green spaces, 10 parks and 100km of greenways to be built.

Moreover, in 2016, the government announced plans for a series of ‘ventilation corridors’, some over a kilometre wide, bringing together parks, water bodies and low-rise buildings with the intention of improving circulation and absorbing pollutants. The plans have received a mixed reception: some believe they are merely window dressing, and will be useless if emissions levels themselves are not significantly reduced, but others argue they have a role to play as part of a wider strategy of pollution control, if they are designed right. Edward Ng, a professor of architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who is helping to design the corridors, believes they need to be interconnected to work.

‘Like a lung for the city, the system can only be effective when the main

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corridors, branches and smaller ones are all formed and work together,’ he told Chinese newspaper Global Times in 2016.

Indeed, reducing pollution is not simply a matter of inserting more green space into the city, but the right types of space and the right context. Recent studies in China have used spatial regression techniques to examine the link between different urban forms and pollution. For example, factors such as urban density, population, land-use mix, street accessibility, shape and continuity all affect air quality, and the shape, evenness and scatteredness of green patches within Beijing have an impact on levels of PM2.5 in the air. Such studies point to the potential for planners to leverage data to gain a more detailed, quantitative understanding of the complex relationship between spatial form and air quality when designing cities.

Similarly, a 2005 report, The Urban Forest in Beijing and its Role in Air Pollution Reduction, demonstrated that specific types, sizes and species of tree were more effective in removing toxins from the air – for example, older trees with wider canopies. As such, the authors said: ‘We recommend the preservation of existing trees, rather than the transplanting or removal of many existing trees that is currently taking place in Beijing. Developers should be required to incorporate existing trees into development plans.’

Reinforcing this notion that landscape design and urban planning need to be

tailored to their context, in August a group of scientists in China and the US contended that the government’s recent tree-planting initiatives have actually made the problem of air pollution worse by slowing down winds that would normally disperse smog.

Under these circumstances, the answer may lie in more targeted solutions: engineer Arup and energy company Sino Green recently presented the prototype for an air purification system that takes the form of a bus shelter at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, which not only removes pollutants but also gathers data about air quality via sensors.

This is a more discreet intervention than the 100m-high air purification tower recently unveiled in the city of Xian, which will suck air into giant greenhouses at its base and is in fact a scaled-down version of the full 500m tower that its makers hope will be installed in Chinese cities. Xian’s ventilation tower is being tested by the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is reported to have produced more than 10 million cubic metres of clean air a day since its launch.

Ultimately, however, China is still left in a quandary. A 2016 study forecast that the development of sustainable green space was poorest when government policy made economic development a priority. Will China put the brakes on its economic miracle for the sake of a healthier and greener future?

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6

Rough diamond Urban renewal in Antwerp

By Peter Sheard CMLI

At the recent World Cities Summit, the mayor of Antwerp set out his vision for the City: ‘Antwerp’s unique position as a pocket-size metropolis brings great opportunities… to establish a true urban community… a common urban identity’. In saying this, he acknowledged a universal truth: cities are more than physical fabric. They are stages for people’s endeavours, crucibles for environmental change, and increasingly complex habitats. Additionally, he acknowledged that Antwerp was a port, and not an island: it had a dynamic past but to have a future, it had to plan for it.

Against a backdrop of urban flight and decay, shifts in population and demographics, and rapidly evolving work patterns, the city had to innovate new ways of planning its future. These are embodied in Antwerp – City of Tomorrow, a handbook for the ‘renewal of urban renewal’ as it pithily describes this manifesto for change. Its primary aim is to make sure that Antwerp ‘keeps renewing itself and remains a living laboratory for tomorrow’. More a ‘how’, and less a ‘where’ and ‘why’, then.

So how does Antwerp aim to keep itself relevant in post-industrial Belgium? How does it retain young, multiethnic talent in a revitalised city?

A first step was a loosening of the regional planning processes which gave Antwerp more autonomy in planning its own territory. Second, its 2006 Strategic Spatial Plan devised a layered planning structure based on the aspirations of its residents; a new zoning for the city; and a policy of 40

targeted interventions, all overseen by an advisory committee of professionals from both public and private sectors.

Third, collaboration has harnessed everyone’s energies for a common purpose. Vitally, the city council has an urban development company, a city architect’s department, a real estate company, and a property and maintenance arm – so it is not a passive bystander, afraid to get its hands dirty and leave it all to the private sector.

The result is initiatives that fall under three pillars: ‘Vibrant residential city’ (integrated live, work, entrepreneurship); ‘Smart network city’ (networks, incubation, smart spaces); and ‘Resilient city’ (harnessing the blue / green routes, or more prosaically, the ‘metabolism’ of the city). When assessed against these criteria, the planning process is surprisingly fluid, deftly able to respond to new challenges, but with a constant

aim: the ecological and economic revival of Antwerp.

The joined-up thinking of Antwerp’s planning authority has another vital facet: it acts as a developer. Hence AG Vespa is an autonomous agency within the city council which identifies (indeed, at times helps to assemble) sites to sponsor. Its influence is extensive and its actions help to promote the city’s objectives and values, while remaining one step removed from the private sector. This altruism is invaluable in a city where disparate private owners could stifle redevelopment and instead helps overcome crossboundary issues, particularly in terms of landscape.

As a direct consequence of this, Antwerp’s built and planned achievements are already impressive.

At first glance, the improvements seem scattergun, but on deeper examination they are targeted and focused. The effect is that the city looks like one huge building site, which must be both encouraging and frustrating for its residents. Take as an example, the old port area immediately north of the city centre, which is being transformed into a new urban quarter.

The public realm is being transformed for a new community of 4,000 residents, living in both private and social housing, all with access to the river or a park, alongside new schools, workspaces and facilities. The city controls the sale of land and enacts rigorous standards of environmental

Public transport and roads are being rationalised, made greener and more cycle friendly.

The old port area is being transformed into a new urban quarter.

The city council imposes rigorous standards of environmental compliance.

6. The revitalised Zuiderdokken with its new public gardens and spaces. © ADR Architects, Georges Descombes and Tractebel.

7. The dynamic ‘Over The Ring’ green space encircling the city. © TVMalen

LARGEST

PETROCHEMICAL COMPLEX IN EUROPE with 37 companies

27,300

SELF­-EMPLOYED CITY RESIDENTS

50%

1 3

92%

39%

OF ALL POLISHED DIAMONDS pass through Antwerp

IN CITIZENS have a tertiary education

2ND LARGEST PORT in Europe

compliance. New squares, such as the Schengenplein, renew the dockland environment in a strategy the city calls, somewhat axiomatically, ‘renewing public realm as a red carpet’.

Another example is the Groen Kwartier, a 7-hectare site, once an old military base, now redeveloped as new mixed-use community where solid, historic Flemish architecture has been enlivened with a juxtaposition of striking new buildings. More importantly over 50% of this dense, inner-city site has been dedicated to green space.

The ‘Smart network city’ pillar has also led to some innovative solutions. The LAB XX project is a pilot scheme exploring how new landscape infrastructure can densify and regenerate the outer suburbs and attract investment. Professionals, businesses and the city council workshopped new ideas – such as a concentric transit system – which fed into the ever-evolving strategic plan.

Seemingly anyone can challenge conventional thought and influence future planning direction.

In a city with a young, dynamic population this seems admirable.

Antwerp also sponsors other initiatives like the Ecohuis, a centre that provides advice and support in the fields of building and renovation, energy and consumption for all residents, to foster incremental change. There is also a strategy called zoominopuwdak (literally ‘zoom in on your roof’) which thermally maps all buildings in Antwerp

OF CITIZENS claim to be happy living in Antwerp

and recommends actions to insulate and generate energy. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the city’s public transport and roads are being rationalised and made greener and more cycle friendly, which on occasion has led to their complete removal.

The ‘Resilient city’ pillar demonstrates the pivotal role landscape is playing in the new Antwerp. These blue / green streams are literal (the River Scheldt, for example) and metaphorical (energy, waste, traffic) but all are involved in making environmentally responsible and climate resilient decisions.

Open space is assessed so that ‘economy and ecology reinforce each other’. Initiatives range in scale from pocket parks like the Munthof to the refurbishment of the Scheldt quaysides

OF POPULATION has a migrant background

to the huge Zuiderdokken, currently a 1970s-era car park but shortly to be a park with fields, a botanic garden and extensive meadows acting as water buffers. The most far-reaching project is called Over the Ring: a plan to cap the principal ring road and barrier to growth, to produce a multifunctional park and green icon for the city.

Antwerp City Council is being unashamedly interventionist in planning its change. Its perceived limitations as a local authority are quite elastic, being by turns more benevolent and more entrepreneurial.

It has no political issue with this approach whatsoever; instead, it sees its methodology as an extension of its existing role of a pioneer of best practice. In that typically pragmatic Flemish way, it’s results that count.

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Block by block ‘Urban Landscape Units’ are becoming essential tools for neighbourhood planning in Barcelona

By Dominic Lutyens

In the 1990s, Barcelona spearheaded the phenomenon of culture-led urban regeneration. When the Catalan capital hosted the Summer Olympics in 1992, it was radically transformed, chiefly from an industrial metropolis to one that promoted leisure and embraced nature. In the run-up to the Games, swathes of industrial buildings along the seafront were demolished, yielding two miles of sandy beaches.

The city’s infrastructure was modernised with an increase in road and sewage-handling capacity, green areas and beaches.

‘The Olympics were an amazing catalyst for improving public spaces, resulting in the renovation of entire neighbourhoods,’ recalls Montserrat Prado, Head of Restoration at the Institute of Urban Landscape at Barcelona City Council. ‘That year, a campaign was launched with the slogan ‘Barcelona posa’t guapa’ (‘Make Barcelona beautiful’) funded by public subsidies. These are ongoing and are being spent on upgrading residential buildings so they meet certain criteria of excellence.’

The city’s profile had been raised considerably when Spain joined the EU in 1986, the Games followed and, by 2012, newly fashionable Barcelona ranked as the 12th most popular city destination in the world.

She stated that the city’s work in landscape urban management began in 2015 when: ‘The city promoted an 42

embryonic study that was the basis of later urban studies.’

This approach was formalised by a charter introduced by the Institute of Urban Landscape introduced a charter, which recognised the importance of the urban landscape as a public asset for all citizens.

‘Later, in 2015,’ says Prado, ‘the city promoted an embyronic study centred on the La Clota district in the north of the city.’ ‘The feeling of belonging to a community is vital to our wellbeing, to bettering our quality of life,’ says Prado. ‘This entails a commitment to looking after public and built space.’ The charter led to guidelines for intervention based on what the Institute calls ‘Urban Landscape Studies’, funded by Barcelona County Council.

But determining how to improve an urban landscape is an inexact science.

How can a theoretical belief that urban landscape contributes to people’s wellbeing be realised in practice? In view of this, how did the Institute

draw up its criteria for intervention?

‘Gradually, a methodology emerged,’ says Prado, while admitting that this is a work in progress: ‘We have to improve our working method, we don’t consider it fully developed yet.’

One of the city’s guidelines is that it rarely permits billboards to be erected unless, says Prado, ‘they improve the look of the building they’re attached to and, if they do, the money paid to the council goes towards improving the urban landscape’.

Crucially, the starting point of Urban Landscape Studies is thorough, empirical research conducted in specific neighbourhoods rather than across the city. She explains: ‘Detailed knowledge of an area is becoming an essential tool for planning, working on infrastructure, interventions on built heritage and for any actions taken in an area. To date, we’ve followed one of two strategies: we’ve either taken into account previous research into what aspects of an area citizens value or we’ve interviewed residents’ groups, many of which have conducted their own research into the history and heritage of their neighbourhood.’

This research then feeds into a broader analysis of what the Institute terms Urban Landscape Units – neighbourhoods with an identifiable character or ‘a particular idiosyncrasy’.

Further studies are conducted into what are called ‘variables’, namely the identification of a neighbourhood’s economic, social and cultural values – called ‘identity generators’ – that help

By 2012, Barcelona ranked as the 12th most popular city destination in the world.

La Clota restored old paths and fences and made a feature of streams.

In a city lacking in natural elements, water is highly prized.

8. Urban Landscape Unit at La Font d’en Fargas.

Source: IMPU based on Bing Maps. Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation

9. Street art in Vallcarca-El Coll. @ Marina Cervera, Josep Mercadé

10. Map of Barcelona showing the neighbourhoods’ administrative boundaries (in red), Urban Landscape Units that have already been researched (orange) and those in the process of being researched (yellow).

Source: IMPU based on Bing Maps. Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation

define its character. This investigation includes pinpointing an area’s strengths. But it also involves spotting its shortcomings in order to mitigate perceived problems, from poor road layouts to ‘discontinuities in the urban fabric’. The Institute has identified some city-wide flaws, too: until the mid-19th century, Barcelona was enclosed by medieval walls and that forced it to build high-density housing.

Consequently, today there are few empty sites to build on and a dearth of parks, green areas and expansive public spaces.

Prado cites La Clota as one of several neighbour­hoods that have been upgraded following this methodology.

Improvements were implemented after close consultation with residents in 2016. ‘The results have been to restore old paths and fences and make a feature of streams in an area that is rural by Barcelona standards,’ says Prado. Several other neighbourhoods – including Vallcarca-El Coll, Font d’en Fargas and Font de la Guatlla – were similarly scrutinised, providing a basis for interventions or conservation.

The residents of Vallcarca-El Coll, on the edge of the city, have long

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campaigned to improve its urban landscape, which lacks open spaces and is fast losing its original, mainly terraced housing. Studies at Font d’en Fargas were initiated at the request of residents concerned about the disappearance of its architectural heritage. Prado describes Font de la Guatlla, on the north-facing slope of Montjuic mountain, as ‘a very fragmented area although its mainly working-class housing dates from the

late 19th to the early 20th centuries’.

The original character was eroded by the construction in the late 20th century of large apartment blocks.

In a city lacking in natural elements, water is highly prized. So, in terms of their regeneration many of these neighbourhoods have a head start since water features prominently in them. A clue to this lies in the names of two of these neighbourhoods: Font means fountain in Catalan.

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Off the bench to score six.

Accrington Public Realm Six unique benches with artwork telling the story of Accrington’s rich and proud history, including the Accrington Pals, Accrington Stanley and the area’s role in the Industrial Revolution, have been installed in the new Town Square.

Client: Hyndburn Borough Council and LCC. Landscape Architects: IBI Group, Manchester.

Designers: Smiling Wolf, Liverpool.

Contractor: NMS Ltd., Ashton-in-Makerfield.

Hardscape supplied: Seating: Black granite artscape sandblasted/laser etched, waterjet-inlayed detail front and back with bespoke timber seats and galvanised steel frames. Inlays brass; armrests brass/bronze.

Paving: Whitworth sandstone paving and Kobra granite setts with a flamed cropped surface.

For further information on our paving products and artscape innovations please visit: www.hardscape.co.uk or telephone: 01204 565 500.

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F E AT U R E S

Going global Three UK-based landscape practices tell us how they’ve built an international presence and how to keep it. and we knew that the public spaces would be a major factor in achieving this.

1. Broadway Maylan Singapore office. © Broadway Maylan

The perfect partnership is an experienced Broadway Malyan colleague alongside a local person, then build a team around them.

Broadway Malyan

Ed Baker, Board Director, Singapore Studio

What was the first international project the practice won?

Broadway Malyan’s international landscape portfolio initially grew organically, often supporting architectural projects or winning commissions from existing clients, essentially as part of an integrated design team. The first landscape work the practice undertook followed our first international projects in Portugal, Spain and then the Middle East.

The approach was inspired by the Javanese planning concept ‘alun alun’ which refers to the traditional town square as the heart of civic activity. All of the buildings are clustered around a central square which comprises nearly 1.5 hectares of open space. The square features a Banyan tree – a symbol of power and success in Javanese culture – and a water feature which will include aquatic plants and help to cool the area. The first phase is now delivered, with Tower Nine and the surrounding landscaping complete. Work is continuing on the other elements now.

Do you set up a local base for international projects?

In the early days of our international work, colleagues would fly in and fly out until we established sufficient scale to make a permanent base viable. As an integrated design practice we have been able to export our landscape skills as part of our wider offer – the economies of scale would make it very difficult to establish a new studio purely

reliant on landscape work. In terms of CIBIS, this was all run from our Singapore studio, with regular site visits to work closely with the client.

Where was your first permanent overseas office?

Our early expansion overseas was very much driven by opportunity. Broadway Malyan’s first international studio was established in May 1996 in Lisbon, Portugal. The move was project led, having won a significant business park commission, which was initially serviced from our Weybridge studio with staff regularly flying out to Lisbon for years. However, when this led to other opportunities, it was decided to set up a permanent base in the city.

The practice opened its Madrid studio four years later, in response to a promise of work from an existing client who we were working with in Portugal. We had an opportunity to go to Singapore in 2007, offering an integrated service approach with our architecture, urbanism, landscape and branding teams.

Our first major landscape job for the Singapore studio was for CIBIS, a new business park in Indonesia. It is a 12-hectare development located in Jakarta, and the masterplan comprises nine towers organised around a central square.

We secured all services on it, from the initial concept for the masterplan through to architectural design of the towers, branding and wayfinding and landscape. Core to the design was the way that the landscape would work. We wanted to create a business village both Indonesian and international in character,

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How has the way you win international work changed today?

The most important lesson we learned from those early days is to ensure that we always have an experienced Broadway Malyan colleague involved from the outset. Every market is different but one of the secrets of our longevity is maintaining the same structures and ethos wherever we are in the world. The perfect partnership is an experienced Broadway Malyan colleague alongside a local person, then build a team around them.

What’s been your most successful office to date?

There are many definitions of success and each of our international studios has been able to establish the kind of reputation within their own market that has justified the effort and investment that went into establishing them in the first place. As our longest standing overseas studio, Lisbon has grown to become an important international hub within the practice with strong links to the work we are doing in Africa, the Middle East and South America, as well as the rest of Europe. It has also built a strong profile across Portugal, not least because it is one of the few international practices that remained throughout the incredibly difficult years that followed the global crash in 2008.

What are the biggest challenges to setting up overseas and maintaining your presence?

The most important aspect is to adapt as quickly as possible to the expectations of the local market. International practices are rarely welcomed with open arms and are also perceived as expensive, so it is important that everything you do is done better than everyone else. Conversely,

2. Concept for Health City Novena, Singapore (CGI). © Broadway Malyan

3. Tower Nine, CIBIS Bisnis Park, Indonesia. © Broadway Malyan

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being an international practice is often an advantage from a recruitment perspective and being able to attract high-quality talent has played a big part in building and maintaining our presence in international markets. A successful practice also has to be willing to continue to travel, even once a local studio is set up. Our team in Singapore work throughout the ASEAN region, with projects going ahead in Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, among others.

How does the international work you do differ to the UK? One of the things about being trained in the UK and then working abroad is that you need to start designing for other clients. Using Singapore as an example, we have to be aware of its tropical climate, which means designing a permeable landscape to aid with water management. It gives you great opportunities to design a lush, green landscape because you know that it will suit the climate.

We also have to consider taking landscape up. Vertical greenery on the external façades of buildings and aspects such as sky gardens allow us to consider landscape in a completely different way, merging it even more closely with the built environment. Connectivity is also important and the landscaping should work both practically and visually.

Which market looks attractive to you next and why?

The rapid rate of urbanisation in Asia is driving a significant portion of business for us. India, for example, is growing at a staggering rate and our team there is busy in retail, residential and urban design in particular.

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We are seeing a broader trend in Asia to invest more in public space and landscape as clients

realise that this is a way of creating fantastic places and spaces, whether it is a business park like CIBIS or the Novena Health City Broadway Malyan masterplanned in Singapore. We see our work in this region continuing to grow, building on our existing portfolio.

Are UK landscape skills in demand internationally?

It is fair to say that the UK has done fantastically well at exporting consultancy services in a number of fields. Our skills do travel well and are in demand, but I think it is as much to do with our wider international approach as the fact that we originated in the UK. Within the practice we’ve worked in around 50 countries and have learned to design in a range of climates and for a range of cultures.

What advice would you give a practice looking to set up overseas for the first time?

There are three key things from our perspective: employ local staff, plan for the long term and try to apply your existing experiences to the local context and culture.

Many international consultants struggle because they attempt to follow a ‘fly-in, fly-out’ strategy for the long term. We see much greater value integrating our business in the country as soon as possible, which means a studio. It’s the only way you can truly understand your clients and the market.

At a glance: Broadway Malyan Set up: 1958 Size: 500 staff Overseas offices: 9 Overseas projects completed: 46

4. UK Pavilion, Milan Expo. © BDP

Our long-standing openness to employing designers from across the world has opened up various project opportunities.

BDP

Nick Edwards, Principal Chair of Landscape Architecture, London What was the first international project the practice won?

Our approach to international work started in the 1970s but began to accelerate in the late 1980s when closer links to Europe became possible. This encouraged us to establish relationships with like-minded businesses and led to us establishing combined studios in Berlin and Paris. Our relationship with French architectural practice Groupe 6, lasted for almost 20 years and greatly benefitted our landscape and urbanism disciplines. Without the connection to Groupe 6 it is unlikely that BDP would have been given the opportunity to work in France.

Do you set up a local base for international projects?

A network of international studios enables us to run or assist with projects in overseas locations. However, where a direct approach is made to a UK studio this does not preclude a project being run and managed from there. BDP’s UK studios also have a close relationship with the practice’s studio in Rotterdam. From there, the studio undertakes urbanism and landscape commissions in the Netherlands, Germany and India, where work is undertaken using the ‘fly-in fly out’ model with support from our local design teams on the ground.

In countries where we have no permanent base, our design teams will travel. Sometimes this can be for a couple of days, but in our work with Nippon Koei it is increasingly likely that teams are relocated for longer periods.

Our post-earthquake work in Christchurch, New Zealand was an exception: our role was design team leader and, given the importance of this task and the magnitude of the commission, it was imperative that we undertook the work ‘in country’. This required the rapid mobilisation of a substantial BDP team and their relocation to the other side of the world. While this presented many challenges, with hindsight it was the only way in which the work could have been completed.

How has the way you win international work changed today?

BDP set up the majority of its international

studios in 2010, after the global recession, when there was less work in the UK market.

Another influence has been our long-standing openness to employing designers from across the world. This approach has opened up various project opportunities, helped us to build international networks and, ultimately, shaped many of our offices as the skills and knowledge of these international team members fused with the expertise in our UK and Dutch studios.

In 2016, BDP was bought by Japanese engineering firm Nippon Koei, which has an even broader international reach and provides a comprehensive support mechanism through which our landscape architects are able to work.

What’s been your most successful office to date?

BDP set up a studio in Shanghai in 2010.

We were already winning a lot of work in China, primarily large retail developments and residential projects, and in most cases these commissions were secured using the ‘suitcase’ model while working in collaboration with local design practices.

There was a lot of work in China at that time and it was felt that BDP could have a bigger slice of the pie if we were located there and could form a long-term strategy for growth in that region. Masterplanning and urban design formed a large part of the work available and that aligned with BDP’s expertise and benefited the landscape discipline.

Other European projects arose in an ad-hoc manner, some stemming from BDPs architectural commissions that had a significant landscape component. These experiences were successful and exciting and gave us the confidence to work further afield.

In this context we then felt confident enough to respond to an invitation to undertake work in India, which in turn led us to open our design studio in New Delhi.

For over 25 years, as landscape architects, we have seen the opportunities which exist overseas and have felt confident to ‘have a go’. BDP now has established studios in Rotterdam, Abu Dhabi, New Delhi and Shanghai and, in seeking overseas work our opportunities are frequently in these locations, where we have direct access to BDP teams who are familiar with the local language, legislation and culture.

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What are the biggest challenges to setting up overseas and maintaining your presence?

Some of the biggest challenges include understanding the characteristics of each place, its client networks, local customs, contracts, insurance, taxes, business visas, legal and fiscal frameworks and finding appropriate premises. We got advice from UK Trade and Investment, whose starter packs cover most of these issues. In India, we became members of the UK-India Business Council, which proved to be a useful network of organisations to tap into.

Local knowledge is essential and maintaining a presence overseas will depend upon the people we employ and their ability to secure work and provide a good service to clients.

In our endeavours in India and China it was vital for us to employ local nationals who had knowledge of language, context and customs, as part of our teams. In Christchurch, we were fortunate to have the support of a local practice. While the studio there was only temporary in nature (we were based there for 16 months), we still needed to address the issues of work permits, insurance and taxation.

Client care is also essential. While it is certainly possible to undertake work from a distance, clients generally prefer you to be physically accessible and this requires you to either be located there, or commit to spending significant amounts of time there.

How does the international work you do differ to the UK? If we take India as an example, the landscape profession is still in its nascent stage there, but is maturing steadily. There aren’t enough institutions training landscape architects, so it is still considered a niche creative field, albeit one that produces very talented professionals.

Some of the positives of establishing a landscape architecture practice in India include: high demand, low supply; a

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5. Bach Dang Harbour, Vietnam. © BDP

6. Avon River Precinct, Christchurch, New Zealand. © BDP

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mandatory green rating for most public-sector projects which necessitates the inclusion of a landscape architect in every project team; an increasing client awareness of a landscape architects’ role and potential; and very little serious competition.

And the downsides: no monitoring agency or professional watchdog means that, in the absence of a licensing authority, we compete against unqualified contractors practising landscape architecture, which leads to unregulated fee structures. In addition, private sector landscape budgets are small and rarely allow for ground-breaking design; a lot of real estate developers (the largest client pool) prefer a ‘design and build’ solution for landscape; and the high cost of landscape architecture professionals (compared to other design disciplines) and challenging fee structures can lead to thin profits, although this is gradually changing.

Which market looks attractive to you next and why?

Canada. We were visited by a Canadian developer who had seen a retail scheme we had completed in the UK and wanted us to introduce that model to Toronto. We have now been commissioned to design retail schemes there and our landscape architects are working on these projects too. Once you have a presence in a city or country it is easier to seize other opportunities off the back of that.

BDP has also recently opened a studio in Singapore, where we are co-located with our colleagues Nippon Koei to support projects throughout South-East Asia.

Are UK landscape skills in demand internationally?

In much of our international masterplanning work, our landscape architects are working as part of large multidisciplinary design teams, quickly gaining the confidence and respect of client bodies as they deliver complex solutions. We believe that this bodes well for the profession in general and in particular for the UK, where landscape architects are well respected.

While many will continue to challenge the work and practices of the Landscape Institute, when compared with bodies representing landscape architects in other countries, the LI provides a model of excellence in the way it deals with education, training and continuing professional development, as well as promoting design excellence and forward thinking.

What advice would you give a practice looking to set up overseas for the first time?

Be thorough in your research and ensure you have local knowledge and expertise.

Use existing trade organisations to assist you, but, most importantly, be determined and enthusiastic.

At a glance: BDP Set up: 1961 Size: 1,031 staff (incl. 59 landscape architects) Overseas offices: 7

7. Cloud Forest, Gardens by the Bay, Singapore. © Craig Sheppard

Gardens by the Bay transformed our profile from being an international nobody into a respected international practice.

Grant Associates

Andrew Grant, Founder and Director, UK and Mike Wood, Associate Director, Singapore

What was the first international project the practice won?

Andrew Grant (AG): When I started the company in 1997, I knew international work would be important to our profile and growth. It seemed to me the opportunities for developing an approach to environmental design-led planning were more apparent in the international market than in the UK.

Gustafson Porter, James Corner Field Operations, OMA and AECOM. When we were informed that we had won the Bay South part of the competition, we were summoned to Singapore to present to the whole Singapore Government Cabinet along with Gustafson Porter, who had won the Bay East part of the project.

Do you set up a local base for international projects?

AG: We ran all design stages of the Gardens by the Bay from the UK, where we could better collaborate with our main design partners. However, we were required to have a presence on site from the start to assist in co-ordination with the client and local consultants. In time, we built up this site team to around 10 landscape architects.

Since opening the Singapore office, we have the option of running many of the Asianbased projects from there, but we find we still have a significant number of projects in that region run from the UK, or where both offices are involved.

How has the way you win international work changed today?

Winning the Gardens by the Bay competition opened up opportunities and invitations to enter other significant competitions and to bid for major international work. The publicity that came from the original competition win

and the subsequent opening of the completed project transformed our profile from being an international nobody into a respected international practice.

We still enter competitions, but we have some clients who come straight to us for a fee proposal. The Tianjin Friendship Park in China was won through an international competition, while the Capitol development in Singapore was a direct approach from the client. We have also noticed that we get invited to join many more international competitions by major architectural practices.

In recent years, for example, we have worked with RSHP, MVRDV, Zaha Hadid Architects, UN Studio, Cox Partnership, SOM and Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

What’s been your most successful office to date?

AG: Singapore is our only overseas office.

It has been a success for opening up new opportunities in South-East Asia but it has taken us time to make it fully effective as a commercial proposition. Now, with almost 20 people in Singapore, we have a remarkable cross-section of public and private projects and a wide network of collaborators and specialist consultants.

Our team there is multinational, with a wide range of language, technical and design skills that we hope can set new standards for landscape architecture practice in the region.

In the early years, we supported a number of interesting international projects led by architects or other designers, including the British Pavilion at the 2005, Expo in Nagoya, Japan, several projects in Spain with the Rogers Stirk Harbour Partnership, and the University of Management in Singapore with Cullinan Studio. However, the international project that changed everything for us was Gardens by the Bay in Singapore.

We were contacted by the National Parks Board of Singapore in late 2005 asking if we would like to meet them. They were travelling the world to meet landscape architects and promote their international competition. We subsequently assembled a team from the UK and submitted our Expression of Interest. The team comprised Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Atelier One, Atelier Ten, Thomas Matthews, Land Design Studio and Buro 4.

I have to admit we were astonished to find ourselves on the shortlist for the final competition in the company of major international names, including Fosters,

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And while we don’t have plans for additional offices in other countries, we are working on significant projects in Singapore, China, India, Malaysia, Australia, Madagascar, Portugal, Russia, Vietnam, Spain and Hungary. In broad terms, half our fee income comes from this international work and half from UK projects.

What are the biggest challenges to setting up overseas and maintaining your presence?

Mike Wood (MW): The recognition and appreciation of landscape architecture in Singapore and South-East Asia is high, primarily due to the completion of some large-scale public-realm projects, including several signature buildings that incorporate excellent vertical greening initiatives.

The scope of some of these projects requires a fast appreciation of new technologies and how they can be applied to our work. So, in a way, the success of the profession here has a reciprocal effect on the challenges of being able to learn and execute these new initiatives. A related challenge is that, obviously, to be successful in these areas you need to have a versatile and passionate team, Singapore is a very transient market for expatriot landscape architects and it is often hard to retain consistency and the historical knowledge of long-term projects.

How does the international work you do differ to the UK? MW: Singapore in particular has established a clear vision for becoming a ‘city in a garden’ and clients and collaborators are generally well versed in the benefits of a connection between plants, people and nature. In my experience, one of the most significant differences of the wider profession is that prospective clients in the region are often keen to see emerging concepts – with quite onerous demands on resources and time – before confirming formal commissions.

AG: South-East Asian clients, both public and private developers, are more open to appointing a landscape architect to lead a

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8. Tianjin Friendship Park, Tianjin, China. © Grant Associates

9. South Bank, Melbourne, Australia. © UNStudio

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team where landscape is a defining part of the project. We have successfully led a number of masterplanning and strategic planning projects in the region which required the management and co-ordination of multiple professional teams. I think this reflects a more open and accepting acknowledgement of the importance of landscape and green space planning in cities, compared to the more traditional structure of planning and design teams in the UK. It has also been interesting to see the growth of the local professional landscape institutions. The Singapore Institute of Landscape Architects has developed a significant core membership and strong relationships with the government authorities and other professional institutions.

This also links into improved and more extensive landscape architecture courses in universities, more skilled graduates and more experienced local professionals, who are essential if we are to continue to grow our office base in these areas.

Which market looks attractive to you next and why?

MW: Recently, we’ve been exposed to largescale Chinese opportunities that engender a lot of the same sustainable initiatives but are increasingly embedded in the project briefs as ‘must-haves’. If these evolve successfully, they will have a positive effect on the way in which landscape architecture can influence the market in Asia.

AG: However, it is wrong to assume our goals are market-driven. On the back of the latest UN report on climate change and the need to keep temperature rises below 1.5°C, we will turn our interest toward opportunities where

we can assist governments and developers to rise to this challenge. Of course, there needs to be a reciprocal financial benefit to our company, but we are in the business of healing ecosystems and creating experiences that are beneficial to people, nature and the living planet.

Are UK landscape skills in demand internationally?

MW: The profession as whole is in need of more passionate and talented landscape architects. This does not necessarily mean that they have to have a UK-based set of skills. We are all learning all of the time because of the dynamic and creative way that the profession is evolving, and we are all responsible for mentoring and fostering skills across the discipline through our collaborations, research and professional communications.

What advice would you give a practice looking to set up an overseas office for the first time?

AG: Ask yourself if that place is somewhere you as the office leader(s) will be happy to visit on a regular basis. There is nothing worse than making regular trips to an overseas destination that brings with it huge problems. You also need to commit time and money to set the office up and for the local team to settle in to the local culture and network of clients and consultants.

At a glance: Grant Associates Set up: 1997 Size: 50 staff in the UK, 20 in Singapore Overseas offices: UK and Singapore Overseas projects completed: 48

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F E AT U R E

Two of the fastest urbanising countries on the planet – India and China – are turning to landscape to solve the associated challenges of rapid urbanisation.

We asked two experts to take a look behind the headlines.

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F E AT U R E

By Jai Warya

Jai Warya CMLI is a landscape architect at The Landscape Partnership and has worked for practices in the UK and India.

1. Mumbai skyline. © iStockphoto）

Avoiding suburbia Why India’s proposed smart cities need landscape-led design.

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f you’ve decided to move out of a busy Indian megacity, with its exorbitant rents, congested roads, strained public services and crowded open spaces, the last thing you want is to end up spending your days shuttling between said megacity and your new home in an urban development on its outskirts, which is awaiting the kind of selfsufficiency only time (and scale) can provide.

The Indian Smart City Mission, launched in 2015, acknowledges the need to address this conundrum to some extent by placing concepts such as mixed land use, walkability and transit-oriented development at the centre of its agenda. However, in the 43-page guidelines published by the Indian Smart Cities Council, one word is conspicuous by its absence: ‘landscape’. The word ‘environment’, by comparison, is mentioned four times. As Robert Macfarlane astutely

pointed out in an article in The Guardian in 2015, the word ‘environment’ creates no pictures in the mind; it is devoid of any content and thus perhaps an ideal word for use in policy-making, which needs to convey balance and allow interpretation.

The Indian urban population is currently 31% of the total population, and estimates suggest this figure will rise to 60% (814 million) by 2030.

The government’s Smart City Mission aims to meet the challenges posed 53

F E AT U R E

by a growing population and ageing city infrastructure by creating 100 smart cities by 2022. Some will be created through urban renewal and retrofitting, others through greenfield development. The upgrade of existing cities is likely to be a slow, messy process, owing to the surfeit of local authorities, stakeholders and residents who need to somehow negotiate, co‑operate, agree and execute even minor schemes. By comparison, greenfield developments are often constructed by individual land development companies whose mandate is clear: build housing and related infrastructure rapidly to relieve pressure on existing megacities.

One such development is Palava City, north of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra. Planned to be delivered in three phases, it has an area of 1,821 hectares and is intended to support a million residents. Palava City was selected by the real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) as the ‘most liveable’ of the upcoming smart cities in a proprietary study published in 2017. JLL analysed proposed smart city developments against 10 parameters of liveability, such as connectivity, access to jobs, safety and security. The emphasis of these criteria and sub-criteria seems to be to check whether a development is able to provide its residents the option of living, working and playing within its boundaries (those keeping track of developments in Urban Design discourse since the 1990s will recognise these as an adaptation of the 10 Principles of New Urbanism). Once again, the words ‘landscape’ , ‘ecology’ and ‘biodiversity’, are not to be found in the report, though some weight is given to the provision of ‘open and green spaces’ and sports amenities.

The Palava City masterplan was completed in 2011 by the planning, urban design and landscape architecture teams at multidisciplinary American firm Sasaki Associates, who describe their proposals as having an ‘ecological response to the beautiful landscape setting with an array of parks, squares, and civic spaces’. The design graphics produced by Sasaki also present an ‘urban district’ (not a smart city) with a continuous lake and 54

river system, dense vegetation, and a dense urban form, counterbalanced by large open spaces.

Whether or not Sasaki’s vision makes it to the ground depends on the developer’s willingness to embrace it and, as in all projects, on how the value of the public realm is seen to weigh up against its buildings and so-called hard infrastructure. A research case-study of the first phase of construction conducted by students of Harvard GSD in 2017 seems to point out a number of missed opportunities in the execution of the scheme. One is the lack of reference to, and integration with, the surrounding landscape, which the study described as ‘highly vegetated and rural in character’.

Another is the lack of threedimensionality in the ground plane, which does not take full advantage of the existing rocky terrain of the site. The study also suggests that more could have been done to reference the parent city and achieve a more ‘Mumbai-esque’ landscape, with its publicly accessible water bodies and active water edges.

Alternatively, innovative approaches could have been adopted to integrate and accommodate water into the landscape. Water is a fundamental and critical issue in any development in the drought affected state of Maharashtra and, as Philadelphia/Bangalore-based landscape architects Dilip DaCunha & Anuradha Mathur showed in their exhibition SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary in 2009, it is possible to reimagine even an existing city the size of Mumbai as a sponge that absorbs water, rather than redirecting it through engineered drainage systems.

Herein lies the challenge (and opportunity) for landscape practitioners working to deliver schemes of this type and scale. With dozens of greenfield smart cities under development, is it inevitable that all of them will take a ‘buildings-first’ approach? Or can landscape practitioners convince developers to adopt the ‘first life, then space, then buildings’ approach championed by urban designers such as Jan Gehl? LDA Design, in their essay of the same name, and The Landscape Institute, in its 2015 paper Profitable Places, also provide

Urban population is 31% of the total population, estimated to rise to 60% by 2030.

valuable arguments for a ‘landscapeled’ approach which foreground green infrastructure, and outline a methodology for doing so. These strategic, policy-level approaches are perhaps the biggest contribution landscape practitioners can make to the Indian Smart Cities Mission.

These are the kind of strategic approaches that a landscape practitioner would still be able to advise on at the implementation stage of a project. Yes, India, along with other rapidly developing countries, needs new greenfield towns to meet the challenges of population growth while also providing higher living standards, but this is only meaningful if it is done in a way that creates places with strong identities; authentic places where people want to live.

A landscape-led approach is a timetested way of giving places identity, and of ensuring that a development facilitates a vibrant public realm.

The Indian Smart City Mission agenda creates a framework for building new urban areas that have all the constituent parts of a successful city, but a city is more than the sum of its parts. It is down to landscape practitioners to define what the word ‘smart’ means with respect to the landscape, and ensure that these new urban districts have a lively, vibrant public realm. For without this, all these cities are likely to end up as being little more than commuter suburbs, which is not the intention of the Indian government’s overall mission.

To use the somewhat cruel words of Jane Jacobs, when she was describing Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept, the goal should be to avoid “...the creation of self-sufficient small towns, really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life with others with no plans of their own”.

It is possible to reimagine even an existing city the size of Mumbai as a sponge that absorbs water.

Water is a fundamental and critical issue in the drought affected state of Maharashtra.

F E AT U R E

By Guangsi Lin and Mengyun Chen

Guangsi Lin is a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture, South China University of Technology.

Mengyun Chen is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture, South China University of Technology.

1. Rolling landform（ © Z + T Studio）

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Soak it up How China is putting a modern twist on the ‘sponge city’ to create urban stormwater management on a massive scale.

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hina, located in the East Asian monsoon region, has always been a flood-prone country. However, since 1978, rapid urbanisation has led to large-scale urban expansion. This has encroached on many natural environments, affecting the natural water cycle of the ecosystem and further aggravating the frequency of floods. ‘As long as it rains, it will flood’ has become a popular saying in cities across the country.

In addition to urban flooding, China today faces a variety of water crises such as water shortages, water pollution, falling groundwater levels, and loss of aquatic habitats.

In this context, China’s stormwater management issues have attracted the attention of many Chinese scholars and industry experts.

Professor Kongjian Yu has said the premise of the urban water crisis is to protect the regional water ecological process. Therefore, the question of how to deal with the water crisis is a systematic problem and requires a more comprehensive solution1. As a result, the concept of the ‘sponge city’ has become a hot topic in Chinese landscape architecture in recent years, and under the promotion of the national government in 2014, it has become the most flourishing field of the landscape architecture industry.

So what exactly is the sponge city and how is China using it to solve the urban water crisis and promote urban construction? Sponge city, as the name implies, means that the city can be as flexible as a sponge, capable of adapting to environmental changes and coping with natural disasters. When it rains, it absorbs water, stores it, infiltrates it, and cleans it. Then, when water is required, the stored water is released and used.

The sponge city has many similarities with western stormwater management concepts, such as the best management practices (BMPs) and low-impact development (LID) in the United States, sustainable 55

F E AT U R E

urban drainage systems (SUDS) in the United Kingdom and water sensitive urban design (WSUD) in Australia. All of these concepts are designed to encourage low-impact development: they aim to alleviate the impact of urban construction on natural hydrology, to transfer water flow in a dynamic and reasonable way to meet local needs within the target range, while reducing pollution and improving water quality. However, the sponge city is not a mirror of these models, but rather a comprehensive approach to solve the urban water crisis completely, based on China’s national conditions.

In terms of policy, in order to promote the construction of sponge cities, the Chinese government issued the Guiding Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Promoting the Construction of Sponge Cities that set the overall work goal of sponge cities: to absorb and store 70% of the rainfall on the spot.

By 2020, more than 20% of China’s urban built-up area will meet the target requirements; by 2030, more than 80% will. In order to respond to national policies, governments at all levels now regard the construction requirements of the sponge city as preconditions for urban planning permission and project construction,

and require the characteristics of stormwater runoff to be maintained before and after urban development and construction. At the same time, various departments organised and co‑ordinated by local government, such as urban planning, urban greening, drainage, and transportation, will also plan and implement design guidelines, local construction goals and specific indicators according to their local conditions.

In terms of technical specifications, the Ministry of Housing and UrbanRural Development issued the Technical Guide for Sponge City Construction – Construction of Low Impact Development Stormwater System (Trial) in October 2014. At the same time, many of the original design specifications have also been adjusted according to the construction requirements of low-impact development. In 2016 , the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development reviewed the Code for Planning and Design of Urban Residential Areas, the Code for Design of Urban Green Spaces, the Code for Design of Urban Road Engineering and the Outdoor Drainage Design Code. These documents have been revised to include the use of underground space, green space and green design, road design and vertical design to promote

the natural accumulation, penetration and purification of stormwater.

In terms of construction methods, to construct these sponge cities, the Chinese government has said that it would allocate market resources, actively promote government and social capital co-operation, and adopt the PublicPrivate Partnership (PPP) model.

Due to the vast territory of China and the different natural and social conditions between cities, the central government has selected cities with different characteristics as pilots.

Between 2015 and 2016, a total of 30 cities were selected as pilot cities for sponge cities.

The sponge scale At the same time, when put into practice, different spatial scales will have different objectives and will adopt different strategies. This results in a multi-scale urban and rural green stormwater infrastructure, including low-impact development stormwater systems, urban stormwater drainage systems, and over-standard stormwater drainage systems2.

Those systems will be used to cope with rainfall events with different precipitation, and protect the cities’ original ecosystems, as well as repair the damaged ecosystem.

The ecological park of Vanke

Scale

Macroscale Mesoscale Reduce urban waterlogging.

Microscale

• Wetland park • Waterfront park • Ecological street • Ecological community • ......

Control surface runoff pollution and reduce total runoff discharge.

• Green roof • Rain Garden • Plants • ......

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• Flood area • Natural water body • Wildlife migration corridor • ......

Overflow Drainage System

Urban Storm-Drainage System

Low-impact development System

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Maintain water resources and restore biological habitat sand.

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100 Recurrence period

The goal of sponge cities: to absorb and store 70% of the rainfall on the spot.

2. The relationship between multi-scale urban stormwater infrastructure.

Adapted from: Liu L J, Wang S S, Zhang Z M, et al. The Exploration of Planning Implementing Approaches for Multiple-scale Urban Green Stormwater Infrastructure[J].

Landscape Architecture Journal, 2017,(1):123-128. (In Chinese)）

3. Master plan of Gui’Aninnovation Park. （© Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Urban Planning and Design Institute）

4. Diagram of cascading wetland at roof（. © Z + T Studio）

5. Pattern of stormwater treatment. （© Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Urban Planning and Design Institute）

Construction and Research Center designed by Z + T Studio is a good example of exploring how to use low-impact development technology to solve the issue of site water treatment.

Due to the extreme climatic conditions during the rainy and dry seasons in Guangdong, the project focuses on how to absorb and store large amounts of stormwater during the rainy season and then ensure that quality water will be available during dry season. The design uses wind power to lift stormwater to roof gardens which, together with ground plant pools, will purify it layer by layer. Unclean water will continue to flow back to the roof and will be continuously purified until the arrival of the next rainy season. At the same time, as a sloping lawn would cause the stormwater flow away quickly, a wavy lawn design has been used to increase the time of rain infiltration.

The Gui’an Ecological Civilization Innovation Park, which was built by Tsinghua University, the Building Research Establishment and the Gui’an New District Government, has shown how the sponge city is put into practice at the intermediate level. The park is located in Guizhou Province in south-western mountainous China.

The park plans to comprehensively use the strategies of ‘infiltration, stagnation, retention, storage, filtration, use and drainage’ to demonstrate how the sponge city can be constructed in a mountainous region.

On the one hand, the design makes full use of the natural terrain to organise the drainage of the site: the combination of lowland and the pond also help natural accumulation,

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infiltration and purification of the stormwater, while at the same time building it into a park that will satisfy the leisure and relaxation needs of the people visiting it. On the other hand, the park also uses high-infiltration technology and advanced source separation technology to reuse the stormwater with zero discharge.

The sponge city is also able to function on a much bigger scale. By comprehensively selecting natural routes or artificial facilities such as natural water bodies, multifunctional water storage, drainage channels, storage tanks and deep tunnels, it can meet stormwater runoff that exceeds the design standards of a typical stormwater drainage system. The sponge city built in Jiangdong New District in Haikou City in southern China, represents an excellent case study.

One of the most prominent problems of this area is alternating droughts followed by floods, and the inversion of seawater, resulting in serious waterlogging. Through a combination of runoff analysis, storm submergence analysis and sea tide inundation analysis in the planning stage, a water security pattern was created for Jiandong New District. The coastal river estuary, pit pond wetland and inland river pond were identified as the key elements of the water security pattern and therefore areas to be protected. At the same time, the pattern identified three levels of ecological corridors, formed by rivers of different widths; sponge facilities of different scales were constructed that worked with these ecological corridors.

The most distinctive feature, however, is that the farmland irrigation system is incorporated into the sponge facility, by reconstructing it in a 4:1 ratio of rice fields and ponds,which allows it be used as a water conservancy system to meet the needs of paddy field growth, as well as to intercept and store surface runoff.

While the concept and technology of the sponge city share some similarities with international concepts such as LID, WSUD and SUDS, it is clear that it has its own unique characteristics in terms of policy implementation, technical specifications, mode of construction 58

6. Schematic diagram of water security pattern. © Turenscape）

7. Sponge facilities of different scales in Jiangdong group. © Turenscape）

8. Farmland morphology before and after renovation (left: before renovation; right: after renovation). © Turenscape）

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and spatial scale. It puts forward comprehensive requirements for water quantity, water quality and water use to solve the outstanding water problem in urban and rural areas in China in a comprehensive and sustainable way. It is becoming the benchmark for urban stormwater management construction in China3.

Kongjian YU, Dihua LI, Yuan H, et al. “SPONGE CITY”: THEORY AND PRACTICE[J]. City Planning Review, 2015, 39(6):26-36. (In Chinese) 2 Liu L J, Wang S S, Zhang Z M, et al. The Exploration of Planning Implementing Approaches for Multiple-scale Urban Green Stormwater Infrastructure[J]. Landscape Architecture Journal, 2017,(1):123-128. (In Chinese) 3 Yang Y, Lin G. A Review on Sponge City[J]. South Architecture, 2015,(3):59-64. (In Chinese) 1

Acknowledgment This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.51761135025) and the State Key Lab of Subtropical Building Science in the South China University of Technology.

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F E AT U R E

By Dr Bridget Snaith CMLI

Drawing inspiration 1

A trip to the Landscape Institute archive at the Museum of English Rural Life proves insightful for landscape architecture students at University of East London.

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f you have the chance to go to the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) in Reading to visit the Landscape Institute drawings collection, I’d recommend it. Last spring, I took our MA Landscape Architecture conversion year students at the University of East London to the archive; it turned out to be a key moment of insight for them: even leading professionals’ drawings do not emerge as perfect finished pieces.

The film and tracing paper drawings from, for example, Sylvia 60

Crowe, Sir Jeffrey Jellicoe or Brenda Colvin with multiple scratchings out and collaged amendments, spoke eloquently of how drawings are worked at, reconfigured and radically amended over a project’s evolution.

They are iterative processes involving other collaborators and the client.

These drawings stand in stark contrast to the polished images on Pinterest or practice websites that were the reference point students previously had access to.

The visit also proved instrumental in unlocking a meaningful connection

for many between theory and professional practice. Our visit came about as part of our second semester theory and professional practice module, which brings together seemingly disparate topics: a placement in one of several landscape offices in and around London; a series of lectures on landscape history and culture, exploring the development of ideas and different understandings and representations of nature; a study of public plantings; and a technical study investigating an aspect of construction.

The connection between all of

1 & 2. UEL Staff and students in the archives at MERL. 3. Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny

by Sylvia Crowe. © The Museum of English Rural Life – Reading.

4. Waterloo Wood drawing. [ink on paper] by Sylvia Crowe (1969). © The Museum of English Rural Life – Reading.

Unlike the painter, the musician, the sculptor or the traditional gardener, the landscape architect rarely has the opportunity to significantly touch and mould the landscape.

these was made through drawing.

We asked the students to reflect on five drawings, including at least two from the collection at MERL – which spans UK landscape practice across the whole of the 20th century and reflects its cultural shifts in technology and style – and at least one drawing from the practice where they were placed. We also asked them to critically review James Corner’s (of Field Operations) thoughts on drawing in landscape architecture. In Corner’s view: ‘Unlike the painter, the musician, the sculptor or the traditional gardener, the landscape architect rarely has the opportunity to significantly touch and mould the landscape medium as it plays out in response to intervention... caught at a peculiar distance from these same elements, working instead with a completely different medium that we call drawing. Creative access to the landscape is therefore remote and indirect, masked by a two dimensional screen.’1 We ask the students to consider ideas such as ‘projection’, ‘notation’ or ‘representation’, and explore the ways in which drawings may be conceived as symbolic or instrumental, metaphorical or analytical. Extracts from two students’ responses to this brief, inspired by Sylvia Crowe’s portfolio are included here, together with photographs of the drawings to which they refer.

1 Corner, J; Bick Hirsch, A (eds) (2014) The Landscape Imagination. Princeton Architectural Press, p.163

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Harvey Erhard

Lisa Peachey

PGDip Landscape Architecture, University of East London

PGDip Landscape Architecture, University of East London

Though Crowe’s drawing is intended to read as a construction diagram, it has been embellished with a huge variety of gestural marks in pencil to represent the variety of planting. Many modern plans utilising CAD simply adopt plain circle or shape outlines to show the diameter of a canopy/plant spread…

Crowe’s plan goes into the realm of fine art and drawing. The planting could have been read just as easily if it were plain or even diagrammatic.

However, the gestural marks do not inhibit the plans readability. I find the humanistic qualities engaging.

Corner references an ink drawing by 15th-Century Japanese artist Sesshu, made by a process of flinging ink at a canvas… and how these gestures could stir the viewers imagination – ‘The flung-ink (although it could be any graphic medium, some much richer such as tempera or oil paints) begins the process by opening up a synesthetic field, a metaphorically suggestive realm that prompts an imaginative seeing.’ (Corner, 2014).

In Crowe’s plan you sense a difference in the fluidity and control of drawing certain plants. You get a sense of flow and uncertainty of movement, smudges over hard lines, ambiguity. Perhaps this ambiguity is useful for the viewer to fill in with their imagination much in the same way as Sesshu’s ambiguity.

Corner talks about drawing as a ‘vehicle of creativity’ for notational drawing and construction. He doesn’t talk about drawing as seeing, as shown [in the drawing of Waterloo Wood] by Crowe. Here, her rapid, expressive lines and annotations suggest a drawing ‘in the field’.

My fine art training taught me to believe that drawing is a mechanism to help you see the world; to enable you to understand your own lack of understanding, and to try to educate yourself about the notion of preconception and your own blind spots. Most of the time we move through space without seeing. It is this seeing part of drawing that I think could be further explored within landscape.

Precedents found as images online are not the same as sitting observing a landscape. While I do believe that looking at a drawing can give you a variety of experience of a space, I also believe that drawing a space can give you an experience.

There is an emphasis on the landscape architect’s ‘vision’. This should come from the process of looking, not by its absence.

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LI life: Humanitarian Working Group

By Rhys Jones

A call to action LUC’s Rhys Jones is establishing a working group within the Landscape Institute to increase its presence in the third sector. He explains why the world needs the landscape profession to fill a humanitarian role.

Consider some of the biggest challenges mankind faces: climate change could displace 200 million people by 2050 at a rate of up to 25–30 million a year; as of 2017 the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide stood at 68.5 million; UN-Habitat estimates that there are currently 880 million people living in slums and by 2025 a further 1.6 billion will require affordable adequate housing. In all of these cases, it is developing nations that will be most affected, through chronic poverty, unhealthy living conditions, environmental pollution, a strain on food systems and increasing vulnerability to natural disasters.

Many of us are aware of this and do something about it. Engineers are heavily involved with postdisaster and humanitarian projects, with 60 Engineers Without Borders organisations around the world.

Architecture’s presence in the field is boosted by ‘starchitects’ Shigeru Ban and Renzo Piano, postgraduate courses by RMIT and The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, and organisations such as Article 25 and Architecture Sans Frontières. The design industry is constantly involved with participatory projects to improve lives and promote inclusivity, such as the workshop Cucula, which encourages refugees to manufacture and sell furniture in Berlin.

And what do we do?

Almost nothing. This is astonishing, considering how relevant the issues within these vulnerable communities are: poor sanitation, water contamination, a spread of disease and a lack of infrastructure are commonplace in both refugee camps

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and slums. Let us remind ourselves of who we are: we work at the interface of people and nature, rationalising the competing needs of them both.

We have a holistic understanding of planning, ecology and the built environment and how they affect the needs of vulnerable communities.

What they need is empowerment, proper design and planning, environmental safeguarding, green infrastructure-focused development and, above all, a healthy environment.

We practise these on a daily basis and – to quote IFLA – must use them to deal with ‘these global threats and challenges’.

I say ‘almost nothing’, because there are a small number of us who do address these issues by working with affected communities, considering the whole system that they exist in, as humanitarian design should. A prime example is the Kounkuey Design Initiative, which transforms waste sites into productive public spaces within informal settlements such as Kibera, Nairobi. Together, these spaces form a network across the slum, considering the real needs of the area beyond the built solution.

Another example is Robert Kruijt’s Rightful Landscape project in Za’atari Refugee Camp. He ran participatory workshops with refugees to identify and solve issues within the camp, such as a lack of infrastructure, vegetation, and services. Working together, they produced successful grey-water garden prototypes that filtered polluted water and provided greenery. These landscape-led principles and projects must be amplified to fill a missing gap in the wider humanitarian design industry.

Step up For the sake of helping the world’s vulnerable, I believe that we have a professional and moral obligation to fill this gap, and that we must start by making our presence felt within the third sector (the broad term covering the humanitarian, development and voluntary sectors). We need to educate ourselves and others on what we can provide, which will require an effort to collaborate with the existing third sector and the humanitarian design community to see where we ‘fit’ within them.

So consider this article a call for action. A group of landscape professionals are establishing a working group with the Landscape Institute, which will be a research collective with the aim of increasing our presence within the third sector.

We will test our skill set through collaborating with different disciplines and organisations, producing a toolkit that will be used to embed landscape-led principles and practice in addressing the global challenges.

Our key objectives are: –– Educate ourselves and others on the landscape profession’s value in addressing the major global challenges.

–– Advance the emerging landscapeled industry within the third sector.

–– Ensure that landscape-led design, planning and management principles are used in improving the quality of life for the world’s vulnerable.

To help set a new direction for the profession and a new approach to helping the world’s vulnerable, get in touch with Rhys Jones at rhysjones.la@gmail.com

LI life: Travel Award 1. The amphitheatre of terraces at Batad, Philippines. © Charles Lamb

2. Little free gallery. © Isabel Swift.

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Will travel for landscape We hear from four past winners of the Landscape Institute Student Travel Award about how the opportunity to investigate an international project has had an influence on their practice.

The Landscape Institute Student Travel Award was set up in memory of David Ashmore, Adrian Brunswick and Michael Norton, three landscape architects who tragically died in an air crash at Biggin Hill in 1979, with a legacy added to the fund in memory of landscape architect Mary Mitchell after her death in 1988.

The award is open to students on an LI-accredited course who want to travel somewhere in the world to

learn about a specific landscape topic or project, and are considered for the award on the basis of an original proposal. Past winners have explored Kyoto’s Temple Gardens in Japan, urban agriculture in Cuba, green infrastructure in Portland, USA, and therapeutic garden design in Sweden.

Find out about 2019’s LI Student Award at: landscapeinstitute.org/ education/landscape-institutestudent-travel-award

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LI life: Travel Award Charles Lamb

(University of Sheffield) won a 2016 award for his proposal, ‘Indigenous sculpting of the land: the use of terraces in sustainable water management systems in the Philippines’. He spent a month in Manila and the mountains around Batad and Banaue in Philippine Cordilleras, northern Luzon.

What was the idea behind your proposal?

I wanted to explore how a landscape could be viewed and managed as a whole to reduce the risks associated with heavy rainfall and the associated runoff, with a particular focus on an indigenous culture using a combination of trees and low-technology management and construction techniques.

Ruth Chittock

(University of Kingston) won a 2017 award for her research proposal, ‘In Search of the Night’. She spent two weeks in California and Nevada.

What was the idea behind your proposal?

Why did you choose the location you did?

I have long been drawn to simplicity of form of rice terraces in Asia. Research on how the rice terraces in the Philippines contribute to the management of the landscape remains underpublished, and the possibility of broadening this knowledge base was a great opportunity.

What did you learn from your trip?

The trip highlighted the need for a greater appreciation and implementation of more environmentally appropriate methods of landscape construction within a rapidly developing country. While the knowledge base exists in the Philippines for how to effectively manage periods of intense rainfall with more environmentally sustainable methods, there is little implementation of such mitigation methods in new developments.

How has your trip influenced you and your practice?

I have continued to research and be influenced by more sustainable approaches to the landscape, from multi-layered herbaceous planting with an eye to economical implementation and management, to

pollution is at a minimum. Rangers at the park have developed an extensive night sky programme and hold an annual dark sky festival to educate and inform visitors about the power of the night sky.

What did you learn from your trip?

The way that we light our environment has direct consequences on our health and wellbeing. This often overlooked aspect of landscape design can play a powerful role in the design of healthy towns and cities. Not only can creative lighting solutions help to improve our health, they can help to reduce our consumption of energy, which has a direct effect on our environment.

To explore the effect that light pollution has on our health as human beings; to investigate what designers can do to minimise these effects; to experience the beauty of a pristine night sky at a designated ‘Dark Sky Park’; and to understand the importance of the preservation of the night sky for future generations.

How has your trip influenced you and your practice?

I now take a more holistic approach to design.

The inclusion of lighting design at an early stage of the design process can help to shape a space and even influence the form and layout, creating an environment which actively promotes our health and wellbeing.

Why did you choose the location you did?

The remote location of the Great Basin National Park in Nevada means that light

Did your trip reveal new opportunities for landscape practitioners?

My trip made me realise that there is a real

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agroforestry and the layering of the forest canopy for food production.

Did your trip reveal new opportunities for landscape practitioners?

My research highlighted that one should always look back. A push for modernity and sustainability should not come at the expense of accrued expertise, as the lessons from the past can provide a sustainable and economical approach to the future.

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opportunity for landscape practitioners to become much more involved in the lighting design for projects. There is opportunity to improve our education on the topic of lighting and the effect that it has on our bodies and minds so that we can create healthy spaces.

It is our responsibility to preserve and protect the night sky for future generations.

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3. Irene Binalet, my local guide for my time in Batad, inspecting rice. © Charles Lamb

4. Wheeler Peak. © Ruth Chittock

LI life: Travel Award 5. Norrbron cultural festival. © Isabel Swift.

6. Urban agriculture in Cuba.

Isabel Swift

© Alice Miall

(Leeds Beckett University) won a 2017 award for her proposal, ‘Active and passive healthy landscapes in Sweden’.

She visited Uppsala, Stockholm and Malmö in Sweden over eight days.

What was the idea behind your proposal?

I wanted to visit the therapy garden at Alnarp University in Uppsala to see a landscape that had been purposefully designed as a rehab space for medical and social issues. I also wanted to see how Swedish society, which has a strong cultural connection to nature and a high ranking in the world happiness index, designed its towns and cities.

Alice Miall

(Birmingham City University) won a 2016 award for her proposal, ‘Urban agriculture in Cuba’. She spent two weeks in Havana and the Pinar del Rio region in Cuba.

What was the idea behind your proposal?

I wanted to understand how sustainable and productive urban landscapes could be retrofitted on a city-wide scale for very little cost and resources over a short time period.

Why did you choose the location you did?

Cuba has the best model for sustainable development in the world and ranks top of the World Wide Fund for Nature environmental footprint index. Although Cuba’s model of

Why did you choose the location you did?

I lived in Sweden in my early 20s. In my 30s, as a therapeutic horticulturalist, I knew that I’d felt Sweden was different and wanted to go back with designer’s eyes and take a fresh look.

people’s homes and facilitated by a local authority-employed horticultural therapist.

It was based in a park, and municipal facilities like this to support social prescribing is an important opportunity for us in the future.

What did you learn from your trip?

The importance of integrating towns and cities with nature, with no hard boundaries between housing and woods, and town planning that facilitates recycling, energy generation, exercise, active travel and positive community interaction.

How has your trip influenced you and your practice?

I’m re-examining existing run-down neighbourhoods, ways to link or relink green areas and create spaces for neighbours to meet, play, grow food, and travel to school and the city centre. My practice involves work with corporate clients wanting to promote biodiversity and staff wellbeing.

Did your trip reveal new opportunities for landscape practitioners?

I visited a garden designed for older people which was used by two adjoining older

urban agro-ecology arose from a uniquely challenging and complex socio-political context, there are many lessons we can learn and apply to cities around the world.

What did you learn from your trip?

As professionals, we tend to focus heavily on the design and delivery of projects, but what we understand as ‘completion’ is really only the beginning for everyone else. The Cuban model was so successful when it first emerged because it empowered people to take ownership and responsibility for their environment, to learn and share knowledge and to build communities around economically viable and ecologically beneficial food systems.

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bodies and educational establishments in order to exchange knowledge, carry out scientific research and consistently refine agro-ecological practices to improve efficiency, methods and yields. We have the opportunity to engage a wider range of people and maximise the impact of our work.

How has your trip influenced you and your practice?

More than anything else, it shaped my interest in the relationship between people and place.

Food growing is one of the most accessible ways for people to become active participants in the urban landscape around them.

Did your trip reveal new opportunities for landscape practitioners?

In Cuba, there are strong relationships between research institutions, healthcare

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LI life: Events and training

By Ben Gosling and Tahlia McKinnon

Reflections on Value: looking back at the Landscape Institute Conference 2018 66

Over 300 delegates and 40 world-class speakers were in attendance at the LI’s 2018 conference to debate and discuss the topic of valuing landscape.

As we continue to face urgent artificially created issues, such as climate change, a growing population, and increased urbanisation, we are presented with a crucial opportunity to categorically identify the ways in which placemaking and landscape intervention can deliver the greatest possible good for people, place and nature.

Acknowledging this, the Landscape Institute, in association with IFLA Europe and the University of Greenwich, staged an international conference on 6-7 September 2018 centring on this vital topic.

Leaders and practitioners from both the built and natural environment professions were invited to trade knowledge, share insight and generate thinking around the cultural, economic and societal benefits of landscape, while the conference itself made a rigorous case for placing landscape at the forefront of positive social change.

Across the two-day event, sessions prompted debate around interdisciplinary collaboration, future trends and natural capital accounting, in addition to current UK policy and planning.

Inspiring as well as wiring A panel of experts spanning landscape science, planning and management discussed how their combined expertise could unlock the value of protected natural spaces, imparting some of the challenges faced and insights gained when attributing value to land on the largest scale.

Delegates heard from New Forest National Park Authority CEO Alison Barnes, who said that, despite having limited tools, NFNPA does great work by ‘brokering partnerships’. She introduced the audience to the Green Halo partnership [newforestnpa.gov.uk/conservation/ green-halo-partnership], a multilateral alliance spanning the public, private and third sectors.

Deborah Sandals, Project Manager at Scottish Natural Heritage, demonstrated the ways in which she makes substantial use of big data as part of a Scotland-wide monitoring programme. Working with a huge range of partners, SNH has provided a comprehensive information resource for every designated landscape in Scotland [gateway.snh.gov.uk].

Images © Paul Upward

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LI life: Events and training

The National Trust’s Nature and Science Director Rosemary Hails suggested that the value of a landscape, whether as a place to live or a place to visit, is perhaps best expressed by those who use it. The Royal Parks attract some 77 million visitors per year, who attend free of charge. To prevent misuse of the landscape, it is crucial to build a principle of value and respect for it.

‘Even something as simple as a selfie,’ Rosemary said, ‘can connect someone with an outdoor space’.

One’s gain, another’s loss – on place and competition Another panel, from Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Place Management concurred that ‘place competitiveness’ encourages developers to ‘get more out of land’.

But Professor Ares Kalandides, Director of the Institute of Place Management, approached the notion of competitiveness with scrutiny.

His home city of Berlin, he said, attracts upwards of 100,000 new residents each year – who, when surveyed, cite the quality of public space as the number one reason for moving to the city. But, as Ares soberly reflected, ‘It is a shame to think only in terms of competition – because what Berlin gains, another city loses’.

It was a reminder to the assembly that, while beautiful and competitive places are good, the problems our professions truly need to solve are

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global – and no single method of valuation holds all the answers.

Collaboration is key A major strategic goal for the Landscape Institute is to increase collaboration between the built and natural environment professions, and it was gratifying to see such a wide-ranging delegation engage in discussion around this crucial theme.

The conference boasted not just an inclusive range of delegates, but tremendously varied speakers too – some of the world’s foremost thinkers were in attendance to share their views.

The impressive international roster of keynotes spanned America, Europe and Canada, with notable speakers including Tony Williams (President, IFLA Europe), Sarah Weir OBE (CEO, Design Council), Ursula Hartenberger (Global Head of Sustainability, RICS Brussels) and Mark Kristmanson (CEO, National Capital Commission, Ottawa, Canada).

‘It’s really interesting that many of the delegates were not members of the Landscape Institute, but people involved alongside the profession and interested in how we can collaborate,’ noted LI President, Adam White.

‘And that’s what’s really exciting about this conference. It was very much an outward-looking celebration of the work we do, and proved to be a stimulating debate, and that’s what I believe we should be doing as an industry.’

#licpd Improve your skills with Landscape Institute CPD

Digital skills, landscape-led planning, natural capital accounting, human skills, plant health.

Explore the 2019 programme: landscapeinstitute.org

LI life: 2018 Awards

Celebrating people, The Landscape Institute Awards 2018 The best in landscape architecture, design, planning and management was celebrated at the 2018 Awards ceremony in London on 22 November.

From 163 entries, the winners highlight an array of projects that focus on landscape design, community, sustainability and innovative thinking. The diversity of the projects showcases the efforts the profession makes to protect and develop the landscape.

Adam White, President of the Landscape Institute, said: ‘From a quarry in Shanghai to a 21st-century back garden in Elephant and Castle, landscape practitioners are leading the way in combating climate change, creating places where people want to live and connecting people, place and nature.

‘The Landscape Institute Awards celebrate the contribution made by the landscape profession to creating a better world, and this year’s crop of award-winning projects sets a new standard in design, management and planning.’

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place and nature

Images Š Paul Upward

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LI life: Events and training

The final months of 2018 saw the LI’s new CPD programme get off to a fine start. During September and November, we held interactive and reflective CPD workshops and events in Wales and North-West England, tackling themes including green infrastructure, digital skills and healthy placemaking.

In keeping with our commitment to inclusive digital learning, we have also begun to livestream our major events, allowing members to access #LICPD content, regardless of time and geographical constraints.

What’s On Our upcoming events cover a number of themes that our members have identified as key to their ongoing skills development. Our comprehensive suite of multidisciplinary CPD events includes content for all professional backgrounds, covering the full spectrum of landscape and placemaking specialisms.

21 February 2019 Oxford

The new NPPF: Landscapeled planning in practice Join industry leaders in discussing changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and how they affect our professional practice.

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Look out for the following events

12 March 2019 Scotland

Natural capital High-level debate and interactive breakout sessions explore the challenges and opportunities of measuring the value of landscape in a natural capital context, and how we can apply this methodology in our daily work.

March 2019 Aylesford

March 2019 London

Polypipe Aylesford factory visit

Digital Skills Masterclass Please note that the human skills day previously announced for February will now take place later in the year

Looking ahead Spring 2019

September 2019

January 2020

Ebbsfleet visit

IFLA International Congress, Oslo

Digital Skills Day, Bristol

June 2019 Plant Health and Biosecurity Day, London

October 2019 Human Skills Day, Birmingham

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ON MY MIND

By Gina Ford

Gina Ford, FASLA is principal and co-founder of Agency Landscape + Planning, a practice dedicated to design that addresses issues of equity, resilience, inclusion and civic action. The practice is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Transcending history Can urbanists reinvent the future by reconnecting with the ideas of one of America’s earliest landscape architects?

Twenty years ago, my official landscape architecture studies at Harvard University largely focused on the designers of the day. I am only now, in practice, coming to know the work of some of the earliest American landscape architects and planners, and John Nolen most recently and most directly.

I bumped into Mr Nolen’s work first in Sarasota, Florida, where my practice is working in collaboration with Sasaki on a plan for 53 acres of waterfront called The Bay. John Nolen’s work – The Nolen Plan of 1925 – is an enduring planning framework for Sarasota, as is his planning for many communities around Florida.

The Nolen Plan has been built upon by many accomplished planners and designers, and The Bay masterplan has been a deeply-engaged community process, resulting in a roadmap for transforming a largely paved site into an ecologically-regenerated public park and 21st-century cultural campus.

My relationship with Nolen’s ideas deepened when our practice started the design process for a renovation of Independence Park in Charlotte, North Carolina. The inaugural commission of Nolen’s illustrious career, 74

Independence Park, is one of a number of great places in Charlotte shaped, in part, by his hand. We are studying the site’s rich layers of ecology, culture and recreation, looking to guide investment in the park’s renovation consistent with both the needs of the community and cultural history.

The uncanny sense that Nolen’s legacy is intertwined with mine was confirmed when a Charlotte-based historian noted that our office in Harvard Square is in the same building – on the same floor, in fact – as Nolen’s once was. My meeting with him was just one hundred years delayed.

Nolen’s legacy is somewhat overlooked. His work, which brought together ideas of religion, civic mindedness and nature, drew on transcendentalist thinking – the idea that people’s spirits are enlarged when touched by nature. Transcendentalism emerged in the early 1800s as a uniquely American philosophy and blossomed in mid-century in the works of Emerson, Thoreau and others.

The influence of this thinking on the American city is as profound, having set the stage for a period of urban growth that is still regarded as a heyday. In Nolen’s case, a

transcendentalist-influenced practice also acknowledged, albeit subtly, issues of gender, race and public space more directly than many other movements of the day (and, it could be argued, more than some early 21st-century urban movements, such as new urbanism and landscape urbanism).

This design intersectionality – landscape, planning and urbanism with faith, community and nature – seems to be a refreshing way forward today.

Reflecting on our work now, as we try to build on Nolen’s legacy, it is clear to me that the transcendentalists were on to something powerful: in an era of increasing technological alienation, social disruption, surging re-urbanisation and environmental degradation, transcendentalism may in fact be poised for a comeback. As people around the globe are moving to cities in record numbers, maybe the need for connection to the inspiration of the wild can be a mechanism for reconnecting us to a shared sense of purpose and beauty. Perhaps it is time for urbanists to pick up the end of that philosophical thread and weave it into our work once again.

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