PORTFOLIO OF SELECTED WORK LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE CAMILLA ROMANO //2024
WEST HENDON PLAYING FIELDS
DESIGN PLAN
Personal Project - Landscape Instutute Design Competition // 2024 2
The brief identifies many issues with the site and aspires to change the playing fields into a multi-sports complex with better circulation and facilities.
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The new design provides: + Improved pedestrian and cycle routes + New sports/community and facilities. + Better connected local community, links to wider initiatives and strategies and contribute to the wider web of green infrastructure. + Creating an exciting sport and community destination for residents which can support achieving improved health, social, community, educational, economic and environmental outcomes. + New employment and volunteering opportunities through the learning centre and sports complex.
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CURRENT SITE ANALYSIS
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Green infrastructure hedgerow fields reed beds
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Circulation 11
The park has few pedestrian tracks and there are no cycle-ways. The space has bad access. pedestrian walkway cycleway
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Blue infrastructure and flood risk The park is next to Brent reservoir and has two zones of low topography with flood risks.
Residential infrastructure
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There are large residential areas surrounding the park between Barnet and Brent councils.
Site Location
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100m
1. Car park 2. Nursery 3. Indoor Sports Complex 4. Basketball Courts 5. Tennis Courts 6. Outdoor Climbing 7. Play Grounds 8. Skate park 9. Cafe 10. Wetland Walk 11. Cycle way 12. Football pitches 13. Water feature 14. Natural swimming pond 15. Orchard/learning Centre 16. Existing Allotments 17. New Community Allotments 18. WC/Changing Rooms 19. Bowls
MULTI-SPORTS COMPLEX
Circulation
sports courts
A cycle highway goes through the park, with two supplementary cycle-ways. There are multiple new pedestrian paths and many access points to the park. access points cycle-ways pedestrian paths Zones
Skatepark
multi-sports facilities education/community hubs nursery free recreational green space recreational hubs promenade allotments nature education walks
Tree infrastructure Football pitches
Water feature
Natural pond
Playground
The park is filled with multi-sports facilities with football pitches, various sports courts and a bowls pitch which will be managed by the indoor sport complex linked to Brent and Barnet Councils. The football pitches are used by local teams and comprise of 6 7-aside pitches and 2 11-aside full size pitches. The natural pond is accessible to everyone and can be used all year round, for cold winter swimming and summer leisure. The nursery is moved to a new building and has a small playground linked to it as well as a bigger playground for older kids. The cafe is close by for adults to watch over their children in the playgrounds or sports facilities. The Indoor sports complex would also be used as an educational centre for all ages, hosting seasonal walks through the park and the wetlands. There is a semipermeable terrace which would act as a flood integrated infrastructure.
New trees planted creating continuous habitats for birds, shade for summer months and biodiversity.
Green/blue infrastructure wetland/reed beds ponds/reservoir dense tree coverage short grass shrubs/perennials allotment gardens
Site plan
GERMANY
LOCAL FARMERS
RHINE RIVER AGENCY - THE
FLOODPLAIN PARLIAMENTARY LANDSCAPE
LOCAL COMMUNITIES INDUSTRIAL LAND OWNERS CHR
MLA Year 2 / Final Project // 2022-23
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
FRANCE LAND SURVEYOR
The Anthropocene presents important issues of how landscape architecture can coexist with natural ecological infrastructures. Humans continue to consume and physically alter rivers in drastic measures. The project begins with the ambition of giving the Rhine River agency through policy and design frameworks. Situated in the upper-middle River Rhine between the borders of Switzerland, Germany and France, an island born as a result of canalisation, which had severe ecological consequences in the depletion of rich wetland ecosystems. The project speculates on how landscape policy can re-integrate the Rhine’s flood regime into the Anthropocene by designing a parliamentary landscape. The design strategy considers the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) as Rhine River agents and primary stakeholders in the process of reclaiming the floodplains of the Rhine. The proposal aims to bring the different stakeholders to the site to discuss and enact the Rhine River management policies – the new landscape ensures an integrated relationship between Humans and the River.
SWITZERLAND
The parliamentary landscape masterplan showing the river interaction in normal and flooded states.
The Communal Gardens of the Floodplain Parliamentary Landscape.
DESIGN PROCESS
The design consists of observatories and a seasonally flooded communal garden that can be used to grow flood tolerant plant species such as tall grasses, hay and corn, which thrive in marsh landscapes. This space can be used to experiment with new methods of floodplain planting.
Technical Sections & Construction Strategy
The land is dug and reused to build the designed landscape.
The design is built by sculpting and stabilising the land using techniques of rammed earth and planting. The excavation process leaves a natural ponds which are used for recreation.
Plants and wooden stakes are used to stabilize the sculpted and built land forms and the flood waters of the Rhine are re-introduced.
The communal gardens can be used as tall grass meadows which are maintained by the local inhabitants.
Axonometrics of communal gardens in flooded and normal state.
Physical model using cnc to explore strategies of excavation.
TESTING RAMMED EARTH PROTOTYPES This is to understand rammed earth’s potential for my project, which would be used for the habitat initiation. They can be used for retaining walls and as ephemeral elements which release plant seeds at different timescales. The materials available at the site are ideal for rammed earth construction and would cut costs and carbon outputs in transportation of material and construction. Using lime binders and concrete aggregates the rammed earth walls have the potential to become more permanent. Mixture of soils, gravel and clay and added water.
SITE MATERIALS FOR CONSTRUCTION /Sand & Soil
permanent (concrete bound)
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hard
Compact the layers of the earth and then left them to dry for a week.
Construction Methods
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1. Procure materials: loam, gravel, silt, sand, clay. Mix the materials with water to achieve appropriate mixture for the rammed earth.
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erosion checks made of trass lime
2. Build the formwork out of wooden panels stabilised with wooden frames and load the first layer of the mixed materials. 3. Using a pneumatic backfill tamper the earth is compacted. After the first layer is rammed, the process is repeated until the form is filled with compacted rammed earth. 4. The wall is left to dry and then the formwork is removed leaving the rammed earth wall.
earth mix
concrete foundations
RHINE POLICY SYSTEM SCENARIO
The Rhine stakeholders and BASF representatives gather in the parliamentary landscape and observe the drastic effects of a chemical leak in the Rhine floodplains and waters.
BASF leaks a chemical in the Rhine River severely impacting the ecosystem and the water quality.
A general meeting is held where the stakeholders and land users discuss how to implement the Rhine policy and remediate the effects of BASF’s chemical leak.
BASF’s representative landscape is reclaimed and bioremediation techniques are implemented through planting and Rhine flooding.
BASF’s Chemical plant on the Rhine’s floodplain responsible for the leak is reclaimed and eventually allowed to be flooded by the Rhine.
The industrial zone in flooded state where the Rhine reclaims the landscape.
The Rhine waters interact and change with Parliamentary landscape.
AGENCY OF THE RIVER LEA Between the Tangible and the Intangible Landscape of the Lea MLA Thesis // 2023
Abstract The thesis explores how we can change our relationship with the River Lea flood regime by acknowledging the river’s agency through interrogating the tangible and intangible landscape of the river, and questioning how we have chosen to Experimental Mapping represent it in maps. The thesis will investigate the urbanised landscape of the Lea in north London and will take the reader through three typologies of altered River landscapes: the Navigation Canal, built reservoirs in the Lea Valley Reservoir and lastly the sites of floodplain Marshland. InChain this series of representations, I experiment with illustrating first the current river as it is enforced on the ground; second I speculate on the meanders and braided morphings the river could enact it free flowing; and I depict our the relationship Lea as an Through these landscapes, thewere thesis will question: canthird we change entity connected to its floodplains. In the second print I attempt to acknowledge the with the River Lea to embrace the river’s natural processes, rather than consider River’s agency in for its human potential to enactand meanders, change As thethe tangible landscape and the river solely resource infrastructure? climate crisis exposes affect its natural hydrological systems. In the third print, I attempt to represent the pressing concerns of flooding and drought, can we use mapping as a tool to River as an expanding entity capable of flooding the landscape and its flooding state actualise the River’s agency to better manage water in the urban landscape? as inseparable from the ‘flowing state’. By excluding the OS map elements of urban infrastructure such as roads, houses, etc. the mapping attempts to focus on the river’s morphology. The forms are based on a collection and layering of historical maps and flood risk data. By using these representations, I am inherently continuing the ideas cultivated in historical and current OS maps. However, I found the method of Lino cutting and printing allows for some unpredictability, which somewhat reflects the intangible notion of the River as a varying, morphing entity.
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LANDSCAPES OF SCALE AND PERFORMANCE
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MLA Year 1 / Term 2 // 2021 - 2022
The project aims to design performative landscapes which explore the relationship between public agency and landscapes of power. Sizewell nuclear power stations are situated in a vast coastal landscape with scales seemingly ungraspable. The project comes as a response to LDA creating a landscape design plan for future Sizewell power stations which avoids the perception of scale as a method to appease the public (Kratt, 2022). The project begins by using techniques of performance and film where the body is used as a relational tool to play with scale and illusory perspectives. Through the process of documenting the site and the human experience, the design scope broadens to consider environmental fluctuations of wind, tide, sediment and time, affecting the human experience and the landscape itself. Analysing these changing conditions, the project culminates into a manipulation of the landscape’s topography with interventions that fluctuate within the site’s fabric, emphasising certain scales and opening new perspectives.
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The design mediates between the public and various scales present in the site and provokes a reclamation of scale in the landscapes of power.
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CONCEPTUAL PERFORMANCE FILMS
I produced a series of films in front of both power stations, exploring the scale and experience of the site. I used my body as a relational tool to guide the viewer into experiencing the dune landscape. The series of films convey the depth of the site and the illusory perspectives of the power stations.
Sizewell A - Film Notation Drawings
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT SKETCHES +
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With the accumulated site research the design takes form in a transformation of the site’s topography, considering ecological systems and forces present in the landscape.
DESIGN LONG-TERM PHASING
TIDAL STRATEGY
MASTERPLAN The design aims to create moments of reflection and open up perspectives accentuating different scales of the landscape and its ecosystem. By transforming the topography and using plants to shape spaces, the design creates a series of moments which expose the visitor to different perceptions of scale.
reedbeds
heather
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existing trees/shrubs
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pathway at +5m
Erica cinerea ‘Heatherbank’
Genista hispanica ‘Spanish Gorse’
Erica cinerea ‘Pink Ice’
Flowers: springautumn
Flowers: springsummer
Flowers: summer autumn
Colours: purple/pink
Colours: yellow
Colours: pink/green
Calluna vulgaris ‘Firefly’
Calluna vulgaris ‘Spring Cream’
Erica carnea F. Alba ‘Springwood white’
Flowers: summerautumn
Flowers: summer autumn
Flowers: winterspring
Colours: pink/red
Colours: white/ green
Colours: white/ green
Erica arborea var. Alpina
Cakile maritima ‘common sea rocket’
Ammophila arenaria ‘Marram grass’
Flowers: spring
Flowers: spring
Flowers: summer
Colours : white/ green
Colours : white/ green
Colours: green/ brown
Phragmites isiaca ‘common reed’
Alisma plantagoaquatica ‘Water plantain’
Spartina pectinata ‘Aureomarginata’
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20m
pathway diversion pondside path
tidal pond
The Diversion Path
heather observatory
ammophila arenaria
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pathway at +10m
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100m
20m
reedbeds pathway pathway semi-sunken at +5m pondside bridge
The Semi-sunken Bridge
heather
Reed beds Aquatic plants
reflective index
sunpath +
Heather reedbeds
Low shrubs Reeds Aquatic plants 0
150m
Ammophila arenaria
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pathway at +10m
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20m
pathway pathway at +5m pondside
The Reflection Pool
100m
reflective pool
Flowers: summer/ autumn colours: purple/green
Flowers: spring colours: white/green
Flowers: summer autumn Colours: green/ brown
STRUCTURAL DETAIL - SEMI-SUNKEN BRIDGE
Landscapes of Scale and Performance - winter render
MONUMENTALISING WATER POWER
MLA Year 1 / Term 1 // 2021
The project commences with a study of the City Road Canal Lock 5, a place of fluctuation for many entities. The significant movement of water and the hydro-powered mechanisms which characterise the lock are brought into light by a small scale intervention. The project explores the different points of hydro-power present in the lock and how we use the power to move boats through the canal. The extensive force generated by the opening and closing of the paddles, an action seemingly arbitrary to the user, is studied and exposed by the designed forms which perform in tandem with the operation of opening and closing the gates. The hydropower is monumentalised through the performance of the forms which turn into fountains mimicking the movements of the water particles when force is generated around the lock.
Section drawings of the water movement before, during and after the lock is being operated.
OTHER PROJECTS
Monumentalising Water Power - MLA First term hand drawn deisgn render.
Freelance landscape visualisation for a private architect’s planning permission submission report in Rye.
A Satirical take on the new generation of nuclear power plants using “fish recovery and return tunnels” which end in most of the fish dying anyway.
Thank you Camilla Romano Portfolio 2023