PR ACTICE
1. Carbon emission considerations for the Leeds City square design competition. © Gillespies LLP
Climate Positive Design – Exploring the Pathfinder Carbon Calculator The Pathfinder app was launched in 2019 – Gillespies has been evaluating its UK application. Kara Heald
Gillespies
As landscape architects, we are increasingly responsible for considering our work’s carbon footprint and climatic impact. This is set in the context of the Landscape Institute’s (LI) 2019 recognition of the climate and biodiversity emergency and subsequent publication of their Climate and Biodiversity Action Plan in May 2020. The Action Plan sets out objectives and actions about how
the LI will respond to the emergency and help equip practitioners to do the same. Two such objectives of the Action Plan, focusing on the carbon impacts of our work, are highly practical and tangible: – Develop and/or signpost towards tools to measure the carbon impacts of different design decisions at a landscape scale. – Work with partner organisations, suppliers and their supply chains to accelerate clearer information on embodied carbon/sequestration potential for hard and soft landscape materials, and provide sustainable specification guidance for practitioners. One such carbon calculation tool which the LI can promote or work with to measure the carbon impacts of design
decisions is Pathfinder (https://app. climatepositivedesign.com/). This is part of Climate Positive Design launched by Pamela Conrad, Principal at CMG Landscape Architecture, in 2019. Pathfinder is North Americabased but can be used for projects around the world. Gillespies began using Pathfinder on our projects in 2021, most recently on our shortlisted competition entry for Leeds City Square. Speaking at the Landscape Architecture Foundation Innovation and Leadership Symposium in 2019 to launch Pathfinder, Pamela Conrad recognised that “as landscape architects and designers of the built environment, we have the tools in our everyday toolkit to sequester carbon, to take it out of the atmosphere.”
LIGHTING IS SUPPLIED BY ENERGY GENERATED FROM SOLAR PANELS
RETENTION OF EXISTING STONE PAVING IN SITU SAVES ON CARBON EMISSIONS
A LARGE DECIDUOUS TREE LIKE QUERCUS ROBUR CAN SEQUESTER 7500 KG OF C02 IN IT’S LIFETIME
SANDSTONE PAVING SOURCED FROM THE UK CAN EMIT 32KG OF C02 PER M2
CONCRETE PAVING, INCLUDING SUB BASE AND REINFORCING, CAN EMIT 171KG OF C02 PER M2
IN A GARDEN BED 5 NO. PLANTS PER M2 CAN SEQUESTER 49KG OF C02 IN THEIR LIFETIME
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