FUTURE-PROOFING OUR TOWNS AND CITIES The easing of lockdown restrictions will slowly present people with the opportunity to return to their pre-pandemic daily routines and behaviours. Urban economies largely depend on commuters and visitors, but with many now accustomed to working from home and shopping online – both HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group have recently announced sharp reductions in office space – there will be a challenge in attracting people back to work, shop, eat and drink. For architects and landscape designers, this represents an opportunity to design, create and regenerate urban spaces. But alongside ensuring they are attractive enough to lure people back, they also need to be safe and secure, with protection that is in-keeping with the surrounding aesthetics. ADVE R TO R I AL
USING PROTECTIVE STREET FURNITURE TO CREATE ATTRACTIVE, SAFE SPACES A key objective in the design and build will be to ensure protective methods don’t impact the look and feel of a space. At Marshalls Landscape Protection, we support architects, planners and landscape designers in tackling the threat posed by intentional and accidental vehicle collisions, while maintaining the design considerations of the space in question. We’re one of the only manufacturers in the world offering a range of decorative street furniture – from seating to planters – that is crash-tested to the latest standards in Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM).
These standards are the means by which products are evaluated on their performance to prevent a hostile or errant vehicle penetrating a specific area. They are designed to provide those responsible for their installation with the assurance that what they specify will work, tested using vehicles in a range of weights and speeds to ensure product performance corresponds with the threat level. Products accredited to PAS 68 / IWA 14.1 – the top level of these certifications – are capable of stopping a 7.5 tonne vehicle travelling at 50mph. At the opposite end of the scale, the PAS 170 accreditation offers protection against vehicles weighing up to 2.5 tonnes travelling up to 10 or 20mph. Each project is unique, so having products that meet various different standards
