Landscape The Journal of the Landscape Institute
Spring 2015
Greenwich’s landscape for learning Rethinking the countryside / 9 Is HS2 on the right track? / 17 A new standard for trees / 45
landscapeinstitute.org Landscape Spring 2015
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DESIGN TANK PHOTO CHARLOTTE SVERDRUP
Enjoying the outdoors since 1947 vestre.com 2
Landscape Spring 2015
Vestre April Design: Espen Voll, Tore Borgersen & Michael Olofsson
Editorial
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Spreading the net much impact do buildings have on their users? There is an increasing feeling that buildings should be designed so that they can accommodate almost any use, so that they will not become redundant. So, for example, an educational institution, while the mix of studies may change, can reasonably be expected to continue to serve its main purpose for decades.
HOW
What does this have to do with landscape architecture? In the case of the new building for Greenwich University, seen on page 34, a great deal.
Photo ©: 1 – Agnese Sanvito
Landscape students have the pleasure of being in a marvellously designed building in the heart of a historic town, with ready access to a wide range of interesting landscapes. On 3 February, the building won the prize for best town-centre project at the London Planning Awards. But for landscape students there is an additional benefit in terms of the building’s green roofs, which offer opportunities for horticultural teaching and research.
One can imagine the students who emerge from this institution distinguishing themselves in the design of parks and urban landscape, grappling successfully with a wide range of urban conditions. But what of the professionals who want to deal with the rural environment? Where should they study
and live? On page 9 Merrick Denton-Thompson talks about the challenges facing the countryside, and the role that landscape professionals can play in addressing them. Some of this work can of course be done by large practices based in cities. And one kind of work does not preclude another. Robert Townshend, for example, principal at Townshend Landscape Architects, one of the most urban of practices, helps run a family farm in his spare time. The LI’s president Noel Farrer spends half his time in London and the other half in the Lake District, however one would imagine that some of the best work would be done by practitioners rooted in or near the areas that they are addressing. The problem then is how those people, dealing with vast and changing subjects, stay up to date and find inspiration. Of course there is CPD and anybody diligent will ensure that they keep up to speed with legislative changes. But what cities give us so wonderfully is the chance for cross-fertilisation, for intellectual stimulation, for exposure to new ideas and different disciplines. Twenty years ago, the only option for the rural practitioner would have been to meet with a few local colleagues and to make the occasional excursion to a big city. But that would probably have been for specific training rather than for casual but fruitful encounters. It’s not true that nothing happens in the physical sense in smaller places. The LI’s Landscape Futures debates, for instance, toured England and there have been subsequent events in the devolved nations. But the great change comes with the internet and with the growth in virtual communities. The ability of people to work anywhere is probably one of the changes that is putting pressure on the countryside – but it also allows those who want to influence what is happening in their local areas to be certain that, however tranquil their environment, they are not in a backwater. If knowledge is power, that power is spreading itself across larger areas. Given the magnitude of the issues that face the rural landscape it is comforting to know that practitioners who base themselves in it have the access to a wide and up-to-date range of thinking.
Landscape Spring 2015
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Landscape Contents
The Journal of the Landscape Institute
Publisher Darkhorse Design Ltd 42 Hamilton Square, Birkenhead Wirral, Merseyside. CH41 5BP T 0151 649 9669 www.darkhorsedesign.co.uk Editor Ruth Slavid landscape@darkhorsedesign.co.uk Editorial advisory panel Tim Waterman, honorary editor David Buck Joe Clancy Edwin Knighton CMLI Amanda McDermott Peter Sheard CMLI John Stuart Murray FLI Eleanor Trenfield CMLI Jo Watkins PPLI Jenifer White CMLI Jill White CMLI Landscape Institute president Noel Farrer PLI Landscape Institute Deputy CEO Paul Lincoln ––– Subscriptions landscapethejournal.org/subscribe Advertising landscapeinstitute.org/contact Membership landscapeinstitute.org/membership Twitter @talklandscape ––– The Landscape Institute is the royal chartered institute for landscape architects.
Regulars Editorial
3 Spreading the net
Bigger picture
6 American approach 9
Update
Reclaiming our countryside
Technical
45 Planting trees to last
Practice
52 BIM can make you powerful
Culture
59 The environmental engagement of Invisible Dust 66
The client for the proposed massive High Speed Two rail line argues that it is doing everything possible to mitigate the effect on the landscape. But should it be going further and thinking more creatively?
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Landscape The Journal of the Landscape Institute
Spring 2015
©2015 Landscape Institute. Landscape is published four times a year by Darkhorse Design. Greenwich’s landscape for learning Rethinking the countryside / 9 Is HS2 on the right track? / 17 A new standard for trees / 45
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landscapeinstitute.org Landscape Spring 2015
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Cover image – University of Greenwich. Image ©: – heneghan peng architects.
Landscape Spring 2015
On the right track
Blang
Landscape is the official journal of the Landscape Institute, ISSN: 1742–2914
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A Word
As a professional body and educational charity, it works to protect, conserve and enhance the natural and built environment for the public benefit. ––– Landscape is printed on FSC paper obtained from a sustainable and well managed source, using environmentally friendly vegetable oil based ink. 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.
Features
Photo ©: 1 – heneghan peng architects 2 – HS2 Ltd 3 – Rich Worth 4 – Andrew Porter
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Thinking along new lines A group of students has looked at the introduction of HS2 in the landscape as an opportunity rather than a problem.
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A landscape for learning With its variety of roof gardens and its splendid urban position, the new building for Greenwich University is not only a superb piece of design but also a valuable learning resource for landscape students.
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Bigger Picture By Ruth Slavid
American approach
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his issue celebrates the new building for Greenwich University (see page 34) and the impact it should have on the education of landscape students. But even in their old, unsatisfactory accommodation, the students were scarcely short of imagination, as can be seen in this work by former MA student Aaron Carpenter. Aaron, who now works for gardener and historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, called his final project ‘Revival of the Ornamental Canal’. It looked at finding a new life for the neglected canal in Wapping, east London.
The project was a way of responding to the claustrophobia that Aaron felt in London alongside the excitement of the city. He based his work on two unlikely- seeming models from American films. These were Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, chosen not for his sociopathic tendencies but for his obsession with detail, and Christopher McCandless, the subject of Into the Wild, for his love of nature (even though it eventually killed him). This is a notion of landscape as escape that is tougher and more challenging than the usual trope of rus in urbe.
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Landscape Spring 2015
Image ©: 1 – Aaron Carpenter
Aaron proposed a treatment of the area that put a set of tools in the hands of local people to regenerate it as they wish. ‘I wanted to create an image that the community could respond to, but could build differently if they wanted to,’ he said.
Landscape Spring 2015
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Landscape Spring 2015
Update By Merrick Denton-Thompson
Reclaiming our countryside
1 – South Downs Character Area and National Park.
The landscape professions are having a great impact on our cities. Now it is time to turn our attentions to the problems of the rural environment.
Photo ©: 1 – Charlie Denton-Thompson
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e landscape profession is having an h impact on the quality of our towns and cities, securing the best outcome for people and place. But can we claim that we are giving the same attention to ‘our green and pleasant land’? Our countryside is continuously being redesigned, through a myriad of incremental influences, where the objectives are far from clear. In my lifetime the countryside has been transformed by agriculture. It produces 60% of our food but continues to pollute our water, erode the diversity of character, impoverish the biological baseline and destroy the historic environment. On a very crowded small island, can we continue to keep town and country apart? The standards that we advocate for multifunctional landscapes in our towns are just as applicable to the countryside. New imperatives for the countryside include resilience to extreme climatic events, the need for renewable energy, restoring biological diversity, transforming the health of our people and, most important of all, repositioning our farming systems to secure sustainable food production.
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Politics With election fever gripping the country, what are the chances that our political masters will show any interest in the countryside? Under our largely conservative administration, Owen Paterson, when he was Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, reduced the target for the £500 million a year programme for the new Countryside Stewardship scheme, from the 70% Natural England achieved in 2013 to 35% of the countryside. The waste of public money is a scandal but the huge damage the decision has done in disenfranchising thousands of farmers who had cautiously entered the scheme is immeasurable! 1
The Conservative Party believes in a combination of free market and deregulation to make the countryside more productive. But the short-term horizons on which financial planning depends and the power of today’s agriculture mean that we cannot allow the free market to determine our countryside. It is only fair to the farming community for the public to both invest and to work collaboratively with it, in order to deliver the multi-functional countryside we all expect and upon which we depend. And what about the Labour Party? Well, not so long ago it advocated importing all our food! Labour does not support the current level of payments from the Common Agricultural Policy despite having limited understanding of the industry. Landscape Spring 2015
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Update
2 – Ash coppice on a 15-year cropping cycle for biomass production. 3 – Bags of nitrate fertiliser. Made from natural gas, these are a limited and non-renewable resource. 4 – Ash coppice, as well as being an ignored but valuable resource, has a distinctive character. 5 – Sainfoin is a natural source of nitrates, a crop that can provide an alternative to unsustainable inputs.
Europe The European influence on our countryside is complex but dramatic. Take, for example, the removal of risks from farming by giving a guaranteed market and price in the 1970s and 1980s. This resulted in the disappearance of all but a tiny proportion of mixed farming, a change that has gone largely un-noticed by the general public. There has been a tendency for our government not to be proactive in moving the farming industry forward, because so many agricultural resources are held by Europe. Another thing that has remained hidden from view is the knock-on effect of the budget administration by the Rural Payments Agency with the threats of disallowance (potentially a huge financial penalty when claiming back European expenditure) discouraging even ministerial intervention, let alone devolving decisions and sound judgement, by other delivery agents such as Natural England. The European Commission is furious with the United Kingdom for failing to set out clearly for the public what benefits are delivered by the Single Farm Payment (the Single Farm Payment is worth about £200 per hectare per year to a UK farmer) – the person in the street thinks it is the Range Rover budget! Administering the countryside The administration of the countryside is complex and continually evolving. The responsibility for many of the conditions being administered by the Rural Payments Agency lies with local government, since 10 Landscape Spring 2015
successive governments have not been able to resist putting more responsibilities onto local government through the annual Local Government Act. The new Greening of Pillar 1 affects 30% of the 59 billion euro Common Agricultural budget in Europe. It is far from clear how the Greening relates to the existing cross-compliance conditions for the other 70% and how they will operate beside the new Countryside Stewardship. Protected landscapes need to be included in any review. For example, why do we have Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Parks where the designation criteria are the same, the only difference being that one is promoted for informal recreation
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and the other is not? Why is each of these responsible for setting the agenda through Management Plans but other agents have the resources for delivery and no obligations to deliver the Management Plans? Each of these public interventions is directing changes to the landscape, on a massive scale, but the changes are mostly by-products, the unintended consequences of a fragmented range of policies. The new Greening policy demonstrates that Europe is in the position that the UK was in the 1980s and that both have a long way to go to start the long haul towards achieving acceptable standards in sustainable food production.
Image ©: 2, 3 – Charlie Denton-Thompson
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Image ©: 4 – Charlie Denton-Thompson 5 – Nature Picture Library. Image ©: 5 – Ernie Janes/naturepl.com.
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Update
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Renewable energy Another competitor for land is the drive to secure renewable energy in various forms. Currently we are growing 42,000 hectares of wheat, oil seed rape and sugar beet in this country, all of which are being converted to bio-diesel or bio-ethanol for road transport. More obvious is the growth in photovoltaic farms cropping up all over the place and also of on-shore wind farms, along with their transmission infrastructure. Less obvious are the attempts at meeting the 5% national target for growing biomass as part of our renewable energy policy. The focus has been on coppice willow no matter which landscape type it is being planted in and yet before the 1920 Forestry Act numerous under-wood stand types existed, many of which would be 12 Landscape Spring 2015
appropriate for the production of biomass. Coppice stands of hazel, ash, small-leafed lime, sweet chestnut and field maple could be grown, all of which create very distinctive landscape character. Resilience to climate change We need to prepare ourselves for further changes in weather patterns as a result of global warming. There is an urgent need to build in resilience, in particular managing the water environment through changes in land management, to increase holding capacity away from urban areas and planning slow release to enable drainage infrastructure to cope. But we also need to be concerned about the quality of the water itself. For example, the water company serving the urban areas around Brighton is forced to import water to dilute the level of nitrates in the drinking water caused by farming in the South Downs National Park (a nice word for this is ‘blending’). The capital cost of the infrastructure to enable the water to be safe to drink is being funded by the water-rate payers. Surely it is time for society to accept that clean drinking water is as much a valued outcome of farming as food is? We should be paying the farmer to produce clean water. Sustainable food production and biodiversity Being self sufficient in food production would require a reduction in food waste and a transformation of our diet, but that assumes
that our current farming system is secure and in good hands. The cold, hard fact is that chemical-driven food production systems are unsustainable and that we have to participate in transforming the industry. You might not want to just take this from me, so I have extracted a few punchy statements from Henry Edmunds, a farmer who presented a paper at the 2014 Oxford Farming Conference. Among other things, he said: • The European support mechanism has effectively made farms less self-sufficient and more dependent on agri-chemicals and mechanisation. • There is apparently only enough phosphate for another fifty harvests. The resources of plant nutrients including nitrate are finite. • The more we discover about the chemistry of the soil and the complicated interaction between fungi and bacteria, the more obvious it is that chemical intervention is nothing more than a crude tool of shortsighted expediency. These chemicals can be directly toxic to the whole spectrum of animal life including ourselves. • Today 90% of all the fish in the ocean carry traces of pesticides in their bodies. Even Emperor penguins in the Antarctic have DDT in their body fat. Analysis of ground water taken from a bore hole at the depth of 80 feet near to where I live
Image ©: 6 – Charlie Denton-Thompson
A new Rural Land Use Policy A new Rural Land Use Policy for England could reconcile the conflicting demands being made on land. Take housing as an example. Noel Farrer, our President, has just analysed new housing being planned and built in his home town of Kendal in the Lake District. The centre of Kendal is run down and in need of investment and regeneration, but all the new housing is being located outside the urban fringe, in open farmland. This development pattern has abandoned the town centre, leaving it bereft of scarce capital investment and on-going revenue, at the same time exacerbating car travel away from the town centre to outlying superstores. Farmland, it seems, is expendable.
6 – The distinctive character of the downs in Hampshire.
7, 8, 9 – Photovoltaic farms are a visible sign of our hunger for renewable energy and of changes to the rural landscape and economy.
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revealed pesticide and nitrate levels grossly exceeding those permitted under Drinking Water Standards. • Why for example were neonicotinoids licensed, when there was a wealth of data available that demonstrated the dire effect that they have on pollinating insects and bees in particular? • Glyphosate has been found to cause the mass death of amphibians
Image ©: 7, 8, 9 – Charlie Denton-Thompson
• Everywhere signs of the failure of conventional farming techniques are becoming more apparent – top soil is being lost one hundred times faster than it is being formed.
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Henry farms his 2,500 acre Cholderton Estate in Wiltshire organically and it is our intention to explore his approach to farming in a later edition of Landscape. His is an example of a commercial farm using the power of natural resources for its economic viability. His comments about soil are common knowledge and yet so little attention is being paid to it. The biodiversity of soil, or the lack of it, can no longer be ignored. So, finally, how can we set meaningful agendas for rural land and how it relates to meeting the needs of a largely urban-based population? What should the mechanism be for securing a balanced approach to land use and all the competing interests?
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Image ©: 9 – Natural England
Update
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10 – The characteristic heathland of the New Forest. 11 – The South Downs are increasingly being ploughed.
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Image ©: 10, 11 – Charlie Denton-Thompson
National Character Areas We are extremely fortunate in the achievements of Natural England in completing its work on modernising the National Character Areas map and supporting data. It uses local names, which means that it identifies places that people can relate to. Because the project maps areas of common, baseline, characteristics, the agenda can be targeted efficiently. By definition the areas map the interaction between humanity and natural systems, prior to mechanisation and chemical use, and so they provide the framework for transforming agricultural systems to produce safe and affordable food, sustainably. The National Character Areas should form the spatial plan for the multifunctional countryside covering the topics raised in this article and many more. It would depart from standard spatial planning because it would integrate development with land and resource management, something the planning system should have done a long time ago.
are already contributing quietly to this agenda. It was the landscape profession that pioneered landscape character mapping; it contributed to setting up the Countryside Stewardship scheme, it sets the boundaries of protected landscapes, it leads the designation of land as Heritage Land for relief from Inheritance Tax and it does a remarkable job of assessing the various impacts from any development and mitigating against them. But we must do more.
Merrick Denton-Thompson OBE FLI is currently Chair of the Landscape Institute’s Policy and Communications Committee. He was the County Landscape Architect for Hampshire and a Founding Board Member of Natural England.
Having set the agenda at a landscape scale, we would suggest a system where the farming industry responds by preparing a simple farm-based management plan which forms the basis of a contractual agreement. That agreement should major on collaboration and incentives, banishing regulation to back-stop status. The landscape profession, its landscape planners, architects, scientists and managers
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Feature
Image Š: HS2 Ltd.
On the right track The client for the proposed massive High Speed Two rail line argues that it is doing everything possible to mitigate the effect on the landscape. But should it be going further and thinking more creatively? BY PAUL WHEELER
Landscape Spring 2015 17
Feature
our time and an amazing engineering undertaking that is critical for Britain’s long-term economic development. But it is equally portrayed as an evil blot on the landscape that will blight and divide communities, destroy ancient woodlands and important natural habitats. Ralph Smyth, senior transport campaigner at Campaign for the Protection of Rural England has described current plans for HS2 as ‘mass-produced, characterless concrete bridges built along the route... It’s as if a thousand, standardised, flat-packed bookcases will be erected alongside rolling fields.’ It doesn’t sound promising. But wherever you stand on the project, it would be wrong to accuse HS2 of not taking its design – in terms of form and function – seriously.
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Last summer HS2 convened a summit bringing together Britain’s top designers with the aim of creating a set of design principles for HS2. Britain has brilliant railway design heritage and ‘HS2 is a fantastic opportunity to take that tradition into the future’, said HS2 chairman David Higgins, at the event. ‘We recognise that High Speed Two will affect those who use it and those who don’t,’ he added, ‘so we must seize that fact as an opportunity.’ We should, he said, ask how stations should reflect and enhance their surroundings, how trains should be designed for greater efficiency and to produce less noise: ‘In short, how can it be the benchmark to which others refer, and how can we exploit this to the benefit of Britain’s design and engineering industries?’
Image ©: 1 – HS2LV Reinventing the Region, Kathryn Moore, ADM, Birmingham City University
described as the great HIGH SPEED TWO (HS2) IS VARIOUSLY infrastructure project of
‘Ultimately, the aim is to transform a linear engineering project into an artistic and scientific national treasure by creating a range of local, regional and national landscape experiences,’ she said. ‘This is not just about trains going faster or creating a singular engineering project. This is a real opportunity to create an enduring legacy for the region and the UK as a whole.’ With respect to Birmingham, she has examined the potential transformation of both the Tame and Blythe valleys, as ‘the green heart of the Birmingham region’. Both, she says, are largely unloved and unnoticed, hidden and blighted by 20th century infrastructure, particularly the road-dominated planning of the 1960s that restricts access to work, educational, cultural and recreational opportunities.
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1 – Diagram produced by HS2LV, outlining the potential to produce a useful and sustainable environment in the Tame and Blythe Valleys. 2 – Visualisation showing how the Curzon Street Station in Birmingham may look.
David Kester, former chief executive of the Design Council, is leading the design vision work for HS2. He says it is all about achieving excellence across all aspects of design. ‘For HS2 to fulfil its transformational potential will mean that every aspect will need to be brilliantly considered and to work hard for so many people: communities along the route, passengers; pretty much every UK citizen... This is what great design and innovation can deliver. It is excellent news for the project that the government and HS2 are placing a high priority on design and ingenuity.’ Nethertheless there is a view that current landscape architecture and planning considerations are based purely on the needs for mitigation and amelioration. What is being talked of at the moment seems to be ‘mostly cosmetics and disguise’, argues Kathryn Moore, professor of landscape architecture at Birmingham City University and former LI President.
Image ©: 2 – HS2 Ltd.
She has initiated her own HS2 Landscape Vision (HS2LV), one that places the landscape at the core of HS2 and uses it as a catalyst for the economic, physical and ecological transformation of communities impacted by the route. ‘By adopting a more holistic and inclusive approach to the overall planning of HS2, it is possible to engage communities in the project, promoting social cohesion and economic development incorporating bio-diversity, culture, ecology spatial quality and identity,’ Kathryn said.
‘We are talking about reinventing the region over a long period. It’s not a concept that exists only during the construction phase of HS2. It’s not just about ecology, things that grow or planting lots of trees,’ she says. Landscape can mediate the impact of HS2, she argues: ‘Let’s turn the whole thing on its head, and use HS2 as a catalyst to help the city become what we want it to be in the long term.’ Essentially, she believes, ‘HS2LV is about spatial planning and design at city region level. It is about re-establishing a symbiotic relationship between the city and its landscape.’ Significantly, HS2LV has found tremendous support and interest. People are already seeing the city in a different way, she says. Politicians and key stakeholders are beginning to recognise the potential of the landscape to mediate between administrative, technical, social and cultural forces, resulting in a project that is valued by all. Andrew Grant, founder of international landscape architecture and urban design practice Grant Associates, is an advocate of Kathryn Moore’s plans. He describes HS2LV as being ‘in the spirit of all the great landscape evolutions in the country, by seizing an opportunity to reinvent and rekindle the connection between the people and the countryside in a way not seen for decades’.
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Feature The route to the future High Speed Two (HS2) is being taken forward in two phases. Phase one will connect London with Birmingham and the West Midlands; and phase two will extend branches of the Y-shaped route to Manchester and Leeds. Other cities will connect into the route using HS2 trains running on existing tracks or via edge-of-town stations.
HS2 is seen increasingly as the start of an expanding national high-speed rail network. Momentum is building in the Scottish Parliament for a highspeed link between Glasgow and Edinburgh that would halve journey times to 30 minutes. And in ‘Rebalancing Britain’, Sir David proposes radically improved east-west rail services between the northern cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Hull; an idea that has already been dubbed HS3.
Image ©: HS2 Ltd.
Construction on phase one is scheduled to start in 2017 and the first high-speed trains should be operating between Birmingham and London by 2026. The preliminary phase two route was announced at the start of 2013, with a planned completion date of 2032. However one of the key recommendations from HS2 chairman Sir David Higgins’ recent (October 2014) report ‘Rebalancing
Britain: from HS2 towards a national transport strategy’ is that construction of phase two should be accelerated with the aim of this line being operational to Crewe by 2027.
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The case for HS2 – it’s all about capacity, stupid Over the last decade passenger rail journeys have grown 50% to 1.46 billion a year, with long-distance journeys growing at the fastest rate. By 2020 a further 400 million journeys will be made.
significantly cheaper than building new high-speed lines, nor would their impacts on the environment and communities be significantly less than those of high-speed rail.
Network Rail predicts the need for additional capacity on Britain’s key inter-urban rail routes will become critical from the mid-2020s, particularly on the West Coast Main Line.
Furthermore, the government says, classic rail lines would deliver far fewer benefits in terms of enhanced connectivity and support for long-term economic growth and geographically rebalancing the country’s economy, than those represented by high-speed lines.
The government asserts that further incremental upgrades to the existing north-south rail network will be insufficient to provide the capacity required to meet the country’s long-term economic growth. There is cross-party support, at least in principal, for the proposal that new railways are needed. These, the government argument runs, could operate at either existing inter-urban train speeds (termed ‘classic’ speeds) or at high speed. But building new classic rail lines would not be
The main premise for HS2 is that it will provide new, long-distance services and release significant capacity on existing routes, which could be further redistributed for passenger and freight trains. Time savings are of secondary importance. As Doug Oakervee, former chairman of HS2, observed: ‘The high-speed name tag is sometimes more of a hindrance than a help in terms of gaining public support.’
Image ©: HS2 Ltd.
Crewe: potential benefits from an integrated connectivity approach
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Feature Keeping low in the landscape is key to noise and visual mitigation 3 – The aim is that the trains will run through green corridors. 4 – Diagram showing a typical cutting.
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HS2 is seeking the powers to construct and maintain the project through the Hybrid Bill process, which is considered the most effective legal framework for major transport infrastructure.
The overriding design consideration is to avoid or reduce landscape and visual impact. As a result, the route has been kept low in the landscape, wherever possible.
There are separate bills for each phase. Parliament approved phase one in April 2014; and HS2 is working towards submitting the phase two bill by 2017. This depends on when government ministers make their final decision on the route, which is now not expected until after the general election in May.
Through the Chilterns Area of Natural Beauty (AONB), for example, a distance of over 20km, the route will run in tunnel for 12.1km and in cutting for 5.5km. This will avoid, or greatly limit, the visibility and noise of the railway in the rural landscape. Overall, says HS2, the special characteristics of the Chilterns AONB ‘will not be significantly affected.’
Consultants Arup and URS led the phase one environmental impact work. Their resulting environmental statement report sets out the principles and approach to mitigation, which is expected to be adopted on phase two.
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Of the total phase one route distance of approximately 230km, about 53km is in tunnel, 74km in cutting, 65km on embankment and 19km on bridges and viaducts. Other overarching design principles include that individual elements of the project, such as bridges and viaducts, are ‘in keeping with the local landscape’, and that some two million trees will be planted to provide visual screening and integrate the railway into the landscape.
Image ©: 3, 4 – HS2 Ltd.
The key document in supporting the bill’s progress is the environmental impact assessment that identifies in detail along the route the significant impacts and mitigation measures on the community, property, landscape, visual amenity, biodiversity, surface and ground water, archaeology, traffic, transport, waste and resources.
5 – Tunnels and cuttings will be used to minimise the impact. 6 – Diagram showing a typical embankment.
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HS2 also embraces the concept of green infrastructure (GI). It identifies this as ‘an approach to planning and development that aims to create a planned network of high-quality green spaces, water resources and other environmental features’. It describes GI as something it can relate to the built or natural environment, which ‘informs various aspects of project development, including design, engineering and environmental management’. Considerations such as landscape, biodiversity and public access are ‘all relevant’, HS2 insists.
Image ©: 5, 6 – HS2 Ltd.
The resulting ‘green corridor’ is not, HS2 says, a single piece of infrastructure; rather it extends beyond the railway corridor to the land directly around the scheme and any wider opportunities for mitigation beyond the railway.
to the movement of wildlife’. Nethertheless it takes a pragmatic view, arguing that on the basis that HS2 is going ahead, it should become Britain’s biggest nature restoration project. It says that HS2, as a flagship infrastructure project, must demonstrate ‘an exemplary regard for the environment’. The Wildlife Trusts’ vision is a 1km-wide ribbon of wildlife-rich landscape either side of the line – planned, established and run by a partnership of residents, landowners and local and expert groups. Recreated and naturally regenerated habitats would buffer, link and provide ‘stepping stones’ between wildlife sites.
It could be argued that it’s not such a huge leap from this position to that of the Wildlife Trusts, particularly when put in the context of HS2’s design vision principles.
In time, the groups says, there would be new meadows, woodlands and wetland expanses to explore, alongside existing farmland, communities and housing. ‘Green bridges, pathways and cycle tracks would reconnect communities cut through by the proposed line.’
The Wildlife Trusts is fundamentally opposed to the project on the basis that ‘the very last thing we should be doing is creating new linear barriers
This would spread the benefits of HS2 to many along the route, it says, rather than just those near its few stations.
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Landscape Spring 2015 23
Feature HS2 mitigation strategy Planned mitigation measures are location specific and depend on an assessment of the nature and severity of the adverse environmental effect and of the effectiveness and value for money of the ameliorating measures. Mitigation measures applied in the design of phase one include: • Developing the route to avoid likely adverse environmental effects, especially on residential properties, community facilities, public open space, businesses, farm buildings, sites of ecological and heritage importance, and the wider landscape • Using tunnels and cuttings to reduce noise effects and provide visual screening for local communities
• Using earth mounding and planting to screen views and integrate the project into the local landscape • Providing fences and earth mounds to reduce noise effects on communities • Providing links across the route to maintain access for roads, public rights of way and properties, and to allow safe passage of wildlife • Creating new habitats and other features of ecological value to compensate for unavoidable losses • Avoiding or reducing impacts on floodplains and flood storage areas
Approach to mitigation
Avoid
Designing the project so that a feature causing effects is avoided (eg. through changes in alignment)
Reduce
Designing the project so that a feature causing effects is reduced (eg. design changes to reduce visual effects)
Abate
Abating, either at the railway (eg. noise barrier) or at receptor (eg. screening at property)
Repair
Restoring or reinstating a feature after effects have occurred (eg. to address temporary construction effects)
Compensate
Compensation for loss or damage (eg. planting new woodland elsewhere, or compensation for loss of amenity)
This is a fascinating, demanding and controversial project. While some criticise the landscape strategy it is clear that a great deal of thought has gone into it at the strategic level. It will be fascinating in the years to come to discover how this is realised in a detailed way. For train passengers, speeding through the landscape, it is the broad brush approach that will be important, but for many residents who live nearby, only their tiny patch of landscape will have true importance – and it will be vital to get this right.
Paul Wheeler is director of Base London, an annual conference and curated exhibition that aims to help deliver a more resilient, future-proof and resilient London 24 Landscape Spring 2015
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Landscape Spring 2015 25
Feature
Thinking along new lines A group of students has looked at the introduction of HS2 in the landscape as an opportunity rather than a problem.
Image ©: – Mathew Lee, DSDHA’s Unit 11 at The Cass.
BY PAUL WHEELER
Landscape Spring 2015 27
Feature
VICTORIAN paintings often include man-made LANDSCAPE elements; a railway viaduct on the
horizon, a canal or a windmill. They were, of course, the cutting edge infrastructures of their day and suggest that, at least in the eye of the 19th century landscape painter, there was beauty in the engineered interjections into the landscape. Yet this view has somehow been lost over the years, suggests architect and urban designer Deboarah Saunt. Saunt is co-founder of architecture practice DSDHA and also has a parallel career in academic research and teaching. She recently ran a RIBA Part II architectural diploma course at The Cass School of Design in London, in which students explored the concept of beautiful infrastructure in the context of HS2, and what needs to happen for infrastructure to become beautiful again. ‘The work of Brunel and Paxton has become part of the national vision of a beautiful Britain,’ Deborah says, ‘but while you get beautiful one-off projects, such as the Millennium Bridge, generally contemporary architects and designers don’t think too much about the aesthetics of large infrastructure.’
‘We wanted to challenge the rhetoric that the architectural opportunity is only at the stations, the points of interchange, and not the route itself,’ Deborah said. Ideas ranged from the potential of using the underside of structures for community purposes, such as a skatepark, ‘thereby creating meeting places that link communities rather than severe them’, to the creation of ‘parallel infrastructure’, as happens in Holland, which enables, among other things, the removal of nearby pylons. The students’ ideas also included the use of ornamental agricultural crops and left-over line-side space being used for a wide range of industrial, energy-related, landscape, community and even housing projects, with the development of contemporary railway villages.
28 Landscape Spring 2015
1
Adding Infrastructure Student: Jason Bechtle In the style of Nancy Wolf, the proposal adds a pedestrian bridge over the HS2 railway tracks.
Image ©: 1 – Jason Bechtle, DSDHA’s Unit 11 at The Cass.
Students studied the line of the phase one route, and were asked to propose how much they could make of the opportunity.
HS2 Viaduct Student: Pavlos Savva Sections of a proposed viaduct and undercroft. With some small interventions (lighting and timber cladding), the underpass becomes a more appealing space, drawing people to the viaduct, which can host a number of activities. It is proposed the highly articulated concrete viaduct is poured in-situ to create a beautiful piece of infrastructure inviting human inhabitation.
Image ©: 2, 3 – Pavlos Savva, DSDHA’s Unit 11 at The Cass.
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Landscape Spring 2015 29
4
Image ©: 4 – Mathew Lee, DSDHA’s Unit 11 at The Cass.
Axonometric showing infrastructure opportunities in Euston Student: Matthew Lee Matthew studied the Euston area and proposed alternatives to the current plans for the station and wider area.
30 Landscape Spring 2015
Feature
5
Image ©: 5, 6 – Rich Worth, DSDHA’s Unit 11 at The Cass.
After Mount Quainton Student: Rich Worth Based on Nicolas Poussin’s Landscape with Polyphemus of 1649, the proposal uses spoil from major infrastructure projects including HS2 to create an artificial mountain in the Chilterns in order to conceal the new line as well as the
attendant servicing and storage facilities. At the same time, it creates a new idyllic landscape that would provide leisure facilities, would change weather patterns providing new agricultural opportunities, and would allow the generation of wind power.
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Landscape Spring 2015 31
Feature
8
Euston Cutting Housing Student: Ben Rowe After the construction of HS2 large strips of land will remain pm either side of the route. Owned by HS2, could these areas be developed to help fight the housing crisis? Different sites would require different typologies. Here at Euston brick, split-level apartments are proposed.
32 Landscape Spring 2015
Image ©: 4 – Mathew Lee, DSDHA’s Unit 11 at The Cass. Image ©: 8 – Ben Rowe, DSDHA’s Unit 11 at The Cass.
7
Turweston Viaduct Diptych Student: Matthew Lee The diptych attempts to recreate landscape painter William Marlow’s composition techniques using lighting and framing. The design responds to the outcome of the countryside mapping and uses a curved pier to take lateral forces from the trains, allowing the remainder of the columns to be more delicate point loads. This helps contextually to create an individual response to the place with an identity associated with the local condition.
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Landscape Spring 2015 33
Feature
With its variety of roof gardens and its splendid urban position, the new building for Greenwich University is not only a superb piece of design but also a valuable learning resource for landscape students. BY RUTH SLAVID
A landscape for learning 34 Landscape Spring 2015
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Landscape Spring 2015 35
Feature 1 – The living roofs started as a planning requirement but have evolved into much more. 2 – The university sits at the heart of historic Greenwich. 3 – Architect Heneghan Peng has broken up the facade to reduce the monumental quality of the building in a domestic environment.
2
AT THE FORMAL Greenwich University’s new OPENING OF building in the heart of the
town, an impressive occasion addressed by former foreign secretary William Hague and a brace of baronesses, the vice chancellor announced that applications from potential students had gone up by 15 per cent. Since attracting students is a prime desire of universities, this can be seen as a tangible return on investment.
36 Landscape Spring 2015
3 Image ©: 1 – Andrew Porter 2, 3 – Hufton + Crow
For landscape professionals the building is exciting on two counts. Firstly, as a building it makes imaginative and vital use of green roofs. And secondly, one of the two departments to occupy the building is the department of architecture and landscape, so landscape students benefit from the magnificent new teaching facilities. The two benefits are linked by the fact that the green roofs are not simply satisfying a planning requirement or providing an ecological or leisure benefit. They do all these things, but they are also an educational resource. Providing a variety of habitats, they will be used both for practical teaching and for research. While not all aspects are fully operational yet, the plan is to study a wide range of topics, including urban farming, algae and aquaponics.
4 – There are numerous views out to the green roofs from inside the building. 5 – Photovoltaic panels on a roof. 6 – Landscape students have access to all the roofs.
All this should be enough for an institution to feel that it has rich resources, but students in Greenwich can enjoy much more. They are on the high street of one of London’s top tourism destinations but within reach of challenging areas of east London urban deprivation while looking out towards the financial powerhouse of Canary Wharf. At the same time they have Greenwich Park, one of the Royal Parks, on their doorstep.
Image ©: 4, 5, 6 – Andrew Porter
Designed by Irish architect Heneghan Peng, the building seems so comfortable in its city-centre position that it is easy to forget how unusual this is for new academic institutions – how much simpler it is to banish them to campuses where they can grow and sprawl, and not connect to anything much. And building in Greenwich is not easy, not least because it is a World Heritage Site. In addition, while the site is commercial at the front, it is residential at the back, with an appealing mishmash of Victorian homes complete with back extensions, rickety stairs and pocket-handkerchief gardens that are often charmingly ramshackle.
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5
6
Landscape Spring 2015 37
Feature
7
It is a great contrast with the previous location of the departments in Eltham, in a complex that had grown by accretion and become increasingly unsatisfactory. The university had at least one false start before fixing on the Greenwich site, made available and affordable by the start of the recession. Not surprisingly, local residents were not enthused by the idea of a large educational building nudging their boundaries. Heneghan Peng has dealt with this cleverly by breaking the building into a number of ‘fingers’ and stepping it at the back, while still keeping large flexible spaces at the heart of the building. It fronts the high street with a series of ‘shop fronts’: the main entrance, the café (sadly a Starbucks), a gallery and a legal advice centre. This approach has two benefits. It brings light into the heart of the building through a series of courtyards, and it allows the building a monumental quality that still respects the tight urban grain.
8
38 Landscape Spring 2015
Stepping the building has allowed the construction of a total of 14 green roofs on a number of levels, a way of putting back some of the greenery that was previously on the site. The initial design by Heneghan Peng showed these all as sedum roofs but as the design evolved they became working roofs. There are three principal research roofs, at the lowest roof level, with access only to landscape students. One of these is designed as a flower meadow, a second includes a pond for a wetland effect, and a third includes the ‘algaeponics’, a futuristic looking structure in which different algae cultures are grown. For example, in the autumn, a strain taken from the Thames was used. There will be great interest to see if it can regenerate itself, particularly as it is salt-tolerant. One potential use for the material produced is as fertiliser.
Image ©: 7 – Andrew Porter 8, 9 – heneghan peng architects
7 – Every roof has a different purpose and planting style. 8 – Section through the building 9 – Second floor plan, showing the variety of green roofs at this level.
9
There are soils of different alkalinities to see how plants do in different environments. There are areas for growing food crops (I was allowed to leave with one of the last of the season’s chillies), there will be a beehive and there are vines growing with Chardonnay grapes, so eventually the university should be able to bottle its own wine. At higher levels, the roofs are open to all users of the building. There are areas of paving as well as planting, and on some of the roofs there are solar panels as well.
Some of the roofs are deeply planted, and the design of the building had to accommodate and be able to support the considerable weight of soil. Because of the design of the building as a series of ‘fingers’, the gardens are set between structural beams, providing the requisite depth of soil. Perhaps the boldest move is the inclusion of two bodies of water, since having standing water on a roof usually terrifies designers because of the potential for leaks. David Allen of the landscape architect for the project, Allen Scott Landscape Design, said, ‘Effectively the ponds are doublelined. There is one waterproofing system for the roof itself, and another for the ponds.’
Landscape Spring 2015 39
10
40 Landscape Spring 2015
Feature 10 – This roof garden with a paved area is intended mainly for recreation. 11 – There is a pond and boggy area on one of the teaching roofs. 12 – One of the two glasshouses at the rear of the building, adjoining the living roofs.
Aquaponics is, like hydroponics, far less waterhungry than conventional agriculture, requiring only around a tenth of the water. This chimes with another of Benz’s interests, in the landscape of arid countries. ‘A lot of people leave areas like the Sahel,’ he says, ‘because of the effects of climate change. If we can provide systems where the materials are readily available they could grow fresh fish and vegetables.’
11
In addition to the green roofs, there are two glass houses at the same level as the research roofs. One will be used for growing plants that will go on the roofs, but the other is more specialist. It will be devoted to aquaponics, one of the principal research topics for the university. ‘Aquaponics’ is a hybrid word, melded from ‘aquaculture’, the growth of fish, and ‘hydroponics’, the process of growing plants without soil. Aquaponics involves the raising of fish and then the use of the effluent that they produce as a nutrient for growing plants hyrdroponically.
Image ©: 10 ,11, 12 – Andrew Porter
‘The beauty is,’ explained Dr Benz Kotzen, who teaches at the university and is an expert in the subject, ‘that the fish need water and oxygen, and so do the hydroponics. Ammonia from the fish effluent and from their gills is transformed naturally into nitrite and then into nitrates which are what the plants live off.’ Benz chairs the European COST programme into aquaponics research (COST stands for European Cooperation in Science and Technology) and Greenwich will be one of the centres of research. It will look at combinations of different fish and crops to see if an approach that is known to be economic in resources can be commercially viable. ‘The main driver we are looking at is urban agriculture,’ he said. ‘The beauty with aquaponics is that you can put it anywhere that has light. People could be growing food for themselves, or urban vegetables.’
Although a variety of fish can be raised in an aquaponics system, including Koi carp, Arctic char and barramundi, the first to be tried at Greenwich will be tilapia, an African lake fish. ‘It is very tolerant and doesn’t mind a little salinity,’ Benz said. As a result, he is looking at using water from the Thames, which is partly saline at Greenwich. It then may be possible to grow samphire, a popular and expensive sea vegetable. Another option may be specialist Asian vegetables, such as water spinach. The university could have built the aquaponics facility itself, as Benz puts it ‘from IKEA’, but chose to go with American specialist Nelson & Pade. In a building that is special in so many ways, the aquaponics facility is perhaps the most special of all.
‘Landscape architecture is seen as a discipline that can have an impact on our cities. We are going for an increase in the quality and ambition of our students.’
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Landscape Spring 2015 41
Feature
13
A building for learning The architecture of the new university building in Stockwell Street has been rightly praised, but spend a little time there and you find yourself thinking not about the intelligent spatial planning or the quality of the concrete finishes but about what a great place it feels for learning. A certain amount of this is evident even to the public gaze. There is a small gallery showcasing imaginative work done at the university fronting the street. Still within the public area is a larger gallery and there is also a large window looking into the model shop. But it is once you pass through the security barriers and up the straight staircase leading to the first floor that the excitement really starts.
There is also some joint project work. For instance, this academic year students have been working on a project called ‘East of Eden’, looking at the potential and problems of the areas to the east of the tourist honeypot that is Greenwich, exploring for example Thamesmead and finding ways to bridge the faultline that runs through its centre. Some might fear that, given the higher public profile of architecture, landscape might remain in its shadow. But although the numbers are smaller, with a total of only around 50 undergraduates, landscape is certainly not seen as a subsidiary discipline. Indeed Neil Spiller, professor of architecture and digital theory, says, ‘Architecture is a subset of landscape. It is abundantly clear as we move forward that we need to green our cities.’ Spiller arrived at the university in 2010 when the design team for the new building had already been appointed, but he saw the potential for bringing disciplines together. As part of a larger restructuring, he put architecture and landscape into one department. ‘The students were not even seeing each other,’ he said.
13 – Small groups can gather for study on the main first-floor teaching area. 14 – Teaching taking place on a roof.
14
42 Landscape Spring 2015
Image ©: 13, 14 – Andrew Porter
There is a large open space that can be divided by relocatable barriers to create space for crits or project working. It is not immediately clear which groups are architects and which are landscape architects, and that is entirely intentional. At all levels they do some work together, with teaching staff from one discipline also teaching the other. So, for example, 3D modelling and GIS systems are taught in a cross-disciplinary way, as are some theory classes, with some teachers coming from one discipline and some from the others.
15
Image ©: 15 – Andrew Porter 16 – Paul Grover courtesy of Keeble Brown
15 – A crit in progress. 16 – Ed Wall: ‘I couldn’t imagine a better location’.
Ed Wall, the academic leader in landscape, said, ‘When we interview students, there is an increase in awareness of landscape as being important in the built environment. There is a huge interest in cross fertilisation. The discipline has a chance to elevate itself through the environmental and social agenda.’ And this means, he said, that now landscape architects have to be able to compete not just with each other but also with architects, with urban designers and with other designers. He added, ‘Landscape architecture is seen as a discipline that can have an impact on our cities. We are going for an increase in the quality and ambition of our students.’
The Stockwell Street building contains seminar rooms, the library for the entire university and also a lecture theatre, now named after previous vice-chancellor Baroness Blackstone. But the greatest teaching resource of all is on the roofs. Whereas previously all the horticultural teaching was run with the university’s partner college, now the students can use the roofs for plant identification as well as for experiments. And they are in easy reach of both Greenwich Park and the Olympic Park. ‘Every week students go either to the parks or on the roofs,’ Ed Wall said. The importance of the facility is highlighted by the fact that the University received a special BREEAM innovation award for its roofs. But even more telling is Ed Wall’s comment. ‘I couldn’t imagine a better location in London for a landscape school,’ he said.
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Landscape Spring 2015 43
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Technical By Keith Sacre
Planting trees to last
1, 2, 3 – How bare our public spaces would look without trees – yet too many newly planted trees fail to thrive.
The new British Standard for young trees aims to cut the current appalling rate of losses, not by being prescriptive but by encouraging an intelligent, thoughtful approach to planting.
I
t seems a lifetime ago that I was approached at an Arboricultural Association conference and asked whether I would be interested in joining a group revisiting an existing British Standard relating to the planting of rootballed trees. The standard was apparently due for revision. Both I and the person asking the question had had a couple of drinks and I foolishly replied, ‘Of course but what is really needed is a whole new standard.’
on the public sector, my own observations and those of other colleagues suggested that the 25% failure figure could be applied more widely. Tony Kirkham, head of the arboretum at Kew, has commented, ‘It is really easy to photograph badly planted and failing trees but really difficult to photograph really well planted trees, which are succeeding in the landscape’.
2
It is the element of succeeding in the landscape that is critical. The word ‘established’, which is often used to specify the condition of newly planted trees, in reality has come to mean that the trees have come into leaf for two or three successive years, are therefore established, and can be left to their own devices. Failure may or may not be immediate and may be protracted over several or more years but how many trees, particularly in the harsh urban environment, have forgotten what it is to grow and just exist year after year until exhaustion causes them to give up?
3
Hence the title of the new standard, ‘Trees: From Nursery to Independence in the Landscape’ which implies that successfully achieving healthy longevity in the landscape for newly planted trees is a process and that independence is a condition achieved when the tree is growing actively and well without any extraneous human intervention. I ask the questions ‘how often is this actually achieved and how often is tree planting carried out and the vision of the drawing achieved?’
1
Image ©: 1, 2, 3 – Capita Lovejoy
Some four years later, in February 2014, the new standard, BS 8545, was published. So what prompted my drunken comments to be subsequently adopted and endorsed by the British Standards Institute? There is one overwhelming answer and a great many subsidiary ones, but there really was a need for a whole new standard. The last major report into tree management by local authorities in England, published in 2008 and commissioned by DEFRA, and called Trees in Towns II, concluded that approximately 25% of all newly planted young trees failed. While the report focused
Landscape Spring 2015 45
Technical
4 – High quality tree planting in Lyon, France where structural soils have been used to facilitate stormwater run-off and structural integrity as well as good tree growth tree growth. 5 – This is the tree planting on a communal open space where properties were valued at £250,000 and upwards. The tree has little or no chance of succeeding because of poor form and poor planting. 6 – The use of high quality Quercus palustris in Stockholm, Sweden using structural soils.
4
The purpose of the standard is to disseminate information and good practice. Its intention is to ensure, as far as is possible with living material, that transplanted trees are able to grow and flourish, thereby making a long-term contribution to the landscape. It aims to identify and consolidate the planting of young trees as a continuous process from policy and design, to tree nursery, through to independence in the landscape. The standard does not seek to be prescriptive or to provide a simple solution to cover all eventualities, recognising that there is no single route to achieve its ends; instead it traces a series of good practice options, providing guidance and enabling an optimal route to be planned, defined by individual site constraint. It is for those involved in the process of achieving independence in the landscape for young trees to decide on which of the options outlined in the body of this standard are appropriate to their own particular circumstances and which of the numerous optional routes to follow. These options will be conditioned by design and strategic intentions, individual site constraints and requirements, nursery availability and 46 Landscape Spring 2015
quality of tree stock, budget size and maintenance schedules. BS 8545 recognises that each site will be different, and that successful use of the standard will depend on the depth and integrity of individual site assessment and the expertise of the team making that site assessment. It emerges that young trees is a specialism which encompasses all elements of the process. So to the document itself and how it can be used to, at least partially, address the situation outlined above. Firstly, it is set out in a different way from previous standards.
used in the drafting of specifications, the preparation of contract documents, the writing of planning conditions or any other document related to young tree management. The emphasis is on the user constructing, from the recommendations, individual documents related to unique site conditions and their own desired outcomes. As I said above, the standard does not attempt to be prescriptive and it cannot be used successfully by simply quoting its number and title. The standard attempts to reinforce the concept that the process
The contents are divided into seven sections which represent the whole process covered by the scope of the standard. These sections are: • Policy and strategy • Site evaluation and constraints • Species selection • Nursery production • Despatch, transportation and storage • Planting • Post planting and maintenance. Each section is represented by a flow chart. The first 17 pages of the standard are set out under the above headings and consist of a series of recommendations. No informative or explanatory information is included in this part of the standard. Each numbered paragraph is designed so that it can be
5
Image ©: 4, 5 – Keith Sacre
BS 8545 is a new standard and is intended for use by people involved in the processes of resourcing, designing with, producing, planting and managing young trees from the nursery into the landscape.
Image ©: 6 – Keith Sacre
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Landscape Spring 2015 47
Technical
7 – Another example of the value of trees in the capital – something we should work to ensure continues.
7
surrounding the planting of young trees in the landscape is an intellectual one and that there is no single recipe that can be picked from the shelf and applied to all situations. The evidential base for the recommendations made in the first 17 pages is then explained in the annexes. These combine the experience and knowledge of the drafting panel with the latest research and opinion. This section provides an extensive reference source which is supplemented by a full bibliography, allowing users of the document to consult original research papers, books and source material if required.
from Clause 5
Soil type Soil profile pH Drainage Compaction
6.4 Macro and micro climate conditions
Light Shade Wind and air movement Irrigation Surfacing
Clause 6 Site evaluation/ constraints assessment 6.5 Existing vegetation
Competition of local tree population Competition from existing tree or other vegetation
6.6 Structural factors
Proximity and use of buildings Street furniture including CCTV Surfacing Frequency and intensity of use of the space by people
Clause 7 Species Selection
Image ©: 7 – Capita Lovejoy
The annexes are regularly punctuated by a series of original drawings which illustrate best practice and some of the problems associated with young trees, particularly those associated with tree nursery practice. These drawings have been produced with a view to them being used to clarify statements made in text.
6.3 Ground assessment
48 Landscape Spring 2015
8 – How bleak the scene opposite would look without the trees.
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1, 2, 3 – the undercutting stages in the production of a properly prepared rootball.
Policy and Strategy Clause 5
4 – a percentage of the root system is left in the ground when the tree is lifted. 5 – the rootball volume which should be full of fibrous roots when the tree is lifted.
Size Evaluation and Constraints Clause 6
Species Selection Clause 7 5
2
3 Nursery Production Clause 8
Dispatch, Transportation and Storage Clause 9
Planting Clause 10
Image ©: 8 – Capita Lovejoy
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5
Post Planting and Maintenance Clause 11
Independence in the Landscape Clause 12
Landscape Spring 2015 49
Technical
Unlike with other standards the drafting panel was chosen for cross-professional expertise rather than to ensure that prominent professional bodies had a representative on the panel. The emphasis was on professional expertise and knowledge. The members of the drafting panel are shown in the box. Members of the drafting panel for the new British Standard for trees. Jeremy Barrell Principal consultant and owner of Barrell Treecare based in Hampshire Rupert Bentley Walls Local authority trees officer specialising in the management of young trees Mick Boddy Arboricultural consultant Dave Brown Garden designer, landscape contractor Brian Crane Arboricultural consultant and former college lecturer in arboriculture Tony Kirkham Arboricultural manager at Kew Gardens Glynn Percival Plant pathologist and head of Bartlett Research UK.
50 Landscape Spring 2015
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Ian Phillips Landscape architect and private consultant. He has represented the Landscape Institute on the Trees and Design Action Group and other bodies Keith Sacre Arboriculturalist and sales director of Barcham Trees Peter Thurman Garden designer and arboriculturist who runs his own practice, The Thurman Consultancy, in Sussex Andy Tipping Member of the executive committe of the London Tree Officers Association and a London tree officer
which could be explained or outlined in an improved fashion. Your comments will be well received and I can be contacted at keith@barchamtrees.co.uk I am also willing to conduct CPD sessions at individual practices to examine the standard more fully and explain in greater detail the reason behind it. It is for you the reader to decide whether a 25% failure rate is acceptable, whether such a failure rate would be acceptable in any other industry and how successfully BS8545 can be used to improve the situation. Keith Sacre has more than 20 years experience in local government as nursery, parks and operations manager. He spent eleven years with Notcutt’s Nurseries with responsibility for tree sales to local authorities and other trade outlets. Currently he is sales director of Barcham Trees.
Mike Volp Local authority tree officer in the planning department of Norwich City Council Pete Wells Nurseryman and founder of Barcham Trees So the standard has been published and feedback so far has been largely positive. This may however be a false position. We will not actually know how successful it has been and how well it meets the requirements for which it was designed until it is adopted by the widest possible user groups and feedback is received. I am sure there are things which have been missed and things
Image ©: 9 – Keith Sacre
9
9 – This tree guard was left in place for too long and is actually damaging the tree it was put in place to protect. There is also a girdling root which has the potential to eventually strangle the tree. 10 – Somebody has spend money on an elaborate tree guard but the tree itself is so poorly structured that it will never produce a successful mature tree.
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Practice By Henry Fenby-Taylor
BIM can make you powerful Landscape architects should be able, through BIM, to influence the landscape in ways that they have never done before. But they need to understand the principles and approaches that BIM requires.
T
h e evolution of BIM as a requirement in construction projects is not simply a central government driver that will only affect a narrow range of projects. This is a sea change that is being brought about by main contractors and lead consultants across the world. It is of vital importance to the effective execution of BIM construction projects that landscape architects engage with the process of implementing BIM level 2 on projects. The unique perspective born from managing the interface between a variety of different consultants lends landscape architecture a view of the design process that encompasses the requirements and modus operandi of a number of different professions, such as architects and civil engineers, while retaining a holistic overview of design. The landscape architect understands the requirements of these different professions at their point of interface. These points of interface could be spatial, physical or systematic. A spatial interface would include the integration of a natural play area with 52 Landscape Spring 2015
a SuDS scheme. A physical interface includes the relationship of a steep planted bank with the footpath intersecting it. A systematic relationship might include the relationship between traditional surface water drainage from a car park and a SuDS system. These ‘interfaces’ may be real or conceptual, simple or complex. Regardless, they contain the possibility to add value or become a source of conflict and wasted effort. This would affect not only landscape architects, but also a whole host of other stakeholders, whether through ineffective coordination of design intent, physical position, budgeted cost, programme or other important considerations for the client and end users. It is important that our industries’ collective capabilities are harnessed in this new environment. It is important for the construction industry, the environment and for society, now and for future generations. BIM is a new toolset, which, once they have equipped themselves, will enable landscape architects to influence the landscape as never before. BIM will save clients money. Start from the ground up It is the ability to effectively manage the relationship between conflicting or clashing design objectives that is going to be of greater importance than ever before within the BIM level 2 project. The current situation regarding such issues is frequently one of frustration and abortive
work, directly resulting in time and cost overrun of projects. The future under a BIM level 2 environment promises much greater scope to influence the effective resolution of design integration. These issues will be caught earlier and their impact understood and resolved more readily. Landscape architects must ensure that they have the capability to engage with the BIM level 2 documentation and process to ensure that interfaces are resolved to a greater level of satisfaction before projects even start. Members of the construction team will have to make a consistent effort during the design and construction phases of a project if they are to realise the benefits of the agreed methods of working. Just saying BIM does not ensure BIM. For example, if the landscape architect requires that there be fewer changes to finished floor level or to the drainage capacity requirement for SUDs, then the responsibility to engage with the BIM construction process falls squarely with them. See BIM, read Lean. BIM is a notoriously slippery acronym, but when reading in the UK context, and especially within the context of the 2016 BIM level 2 deadline, the reader, upon seeing the BIM acronym mentioned should substitute the words ‘lean construction’. This is of course a generalisation but let us examine how it would work.
BIM is a new toolset, which, once they have equipped themselves, will enable landscape architects to influence the landscape as never before.
To understand the benefits that BIM level 2 is looking to confer on the construction industry it is necessary to understand some of the intellectual underpinning of the current level 2 requirements. This requires an understanding of lean construction. The two fundamentals are value and waste. Waste is any action that takes time, materials or money, but does not add value to the project. Value is defined by the customer’s requirements. It’s as simple and as complex as that. We avoid waste and add value.
To make this concept transferable to landscape architects, we should imagine that the electronic files that are being produced every day for design are as much part of the factory line as is the car in the automotive example. The files come at an expected time, are worked on for an agreed period of time before being shared with the next professional at the agreed time. Expectations are clearly set and performance across the process becomes more transparent.
Waste is easiest to visualise in a factory environment. Only the required quantity of materials is provided at the correct time to the correct operative, who, correctly, administers an established process to correctly pass the fruits of their labour, the product, as it begins to take shape to the next operative in the chain. All this avoids the need to stop, hang about or otherwise dither which can be caused by too much or too little work taking place in the various stages of production. So instead, the work is completed just in time. Hence ‘just in time’ delivery, which is a fundamental tenet of lean. This is lean production and is often the process we see in the news where cars move serenely and certainly through factories with the utter confidence that from the beginning of the fabrication process to the end of the line a complete car will be produced as was envisaged by the designers, engineers and project managers involved.
In addition, it is worth remembering that BIM is also a byword for a number of technological innovations within the construction industry. These various tools are frequently discussed and some separation is often sought between BIM the process and BIM the technology innovation. There is such a separation, but it is not as distinct as it may appear. In order to implement BIM processes effectively there is a requirement for the effective use of software. Conversely, to implement BIM technology effectively requires the effective use of processes.
What is BIM Level 2? The requirements of BIM level 2 have developed over time and have a technical and process set of requirements This means that there is a requirement for adapting IT within your project team and that there is also a series of project management processes that also must be adhered to. The 2011 Government Construction Strategy first set out the technical requirement that by 2016 the government will require a fully collaborative 3D model with project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic. The process requirement is described in a BSRIA blog as the seven pillars of BIM wisdom. The principal document requiring the attention of landscape architects is PAS 1192-2 which is available for download free from the British Standards Institution.
What can landscape architecture do? Specifically. There are a number of key relationships between what is designed by different consultants that directly or indirectly influence the form of the landscape. Buildings, roads, railways, dams, flood defences, cities, forests and quarries are Landscape Spring 2015 53
Practice
Through BIM we can catch problems before they occur.
just a few such elements. A landscape architect can provide specific benefits beyond their specific design expertise through their holistic understanding of design. Systematic and spatial relationships are a key factor for the success of places, but may be overlooked by those disciplines that are more closely focused on achieving specific engineered outcomes. The usability of space and the client’s vision for the project are of strategic importance to the success of a project and more specific concerns such as right to light, cut and fill, and ground conditions, will affect the operational activities of stakeholders in the design, construction and management phases of a built asset’s lifecycle. These are critical areas that landscape architects are well placed to affect. In order to capture these requirements it is necessary to be engaged with the BIM process at the earliest possible juncture. Should key stakeholders, such as the landscape architect, fail to have their knowledge embedded within the project documents that are part and parcel of BIM level 2, then it will be difficult to achieve the benefits that a landscape architect can deliver to a BIM process. This is not an isolated requirement for landscape architects. Indeed, a robust pre-commencement process is central to the success of a level 2 project. Ensuring that the interactions and interfaces between stakeholders are planned effectively means that waste can 54 Landscape Spring 2015
Poor Coordination and Preparation
Instruction Professional
Input
Geometrics Engineer
Survey Output
Survey
Survey missing designer’s and constructor’s requirements
Input
Design
Designer 1
Design Coordination Original survey not shared
Designer 2
Design
Output
Design
A well executed survey that doesn’t capture the requirements of designers and constructors results in poor information. If the survey isn’t shared throughout the project lifecycle effectively then ultimately coordination of the design process can fail.
A well briefed survey can capture the requirements of designers and constructors resulting in high quality relevant information that effectively informs the rest of the project lifecycle.
be reduced, and value added. Through BIM, we can catch problems before they occur.
Effective Coordination and Preparation
What are my tools? Landscape architects will have to meet the same requirements that other construction professionals are required to reach by 2016, namely BIM level 2 compliance for centrally procured government projects. These requirements are still being established, including the NBS digital plan of works tool, currently in development. This will act as the portal for landscape architects and other professionals to the project content as well as being the classification system that will define what spaces and objects are to be designed.
Instruction Professional
Input
Geometrics Engineer
Survey Output
Survey
Survey accurately capturing site features required for design
Input
Designer 1
Prepare
Design Design Coordination
Designer 2
Prepare
Design
Output
Design
A well briefed survey can capture the requirements of designers and constructors resulting in high quality relevant information that effectively informs the rest of the project lifecycle.
The project deliverables, including the level of graphical detail as well as information, are not set in stone at the project outset. Where a current scope of works negotiation may take place in a relatively informal manner, the BIM level 2 requirement will be exacting in its detail. PAS:1192-2:2013 is the standard that forms the foundation of any BIM level 2 project’s design and construction phase. It references several other documents that are also pertinent. However it is this standard that is the starting point for BIM level 2, and it has within it all the tools of a BIM level 2 project from design to construction. The first tool is the Employer’s Information Requirements, which will set out a Landscape Spring 2015 55
Practice
A BIM execution plan is the tool that defines how a project will be achieved.
methodology for working to which those bidding for design work will be required to adhere. Nevertheless, this is not a complete and infallible document. Bidding consultants and teams of consultants should propose a BIM execution plan that meets the needs of the Employer’s Information Requirements, even if there is a change in the exact methodology that is proposed therein. Employer’s Information Requirements must be written by technical experts and so it should be taken that any changes to the plans set out therein will be dealt with in the same manner. A BIM execution plan is the tool that defines how a project will be achieved. It is a useful tool in its own right, as it provides a yardstick against which consultants and project teams may measure and develop their own capabilities and practices. Technical tools for the effective implementation of BIM on a project begin with the survey. The best way to understand the interactions and interfaces between the various design disciplines and the existing site is to have a high-quality survey that effectively captures the required information at the outset. Secondly, in order to provide an effective understanding of the site conditions as described by the survey, the ability to work effectively in three dimensions is paramount. BIM is about creating an environment of certainty within a project team. The purpose of BIM level 2 and IT tools alike is to ensure that what is 56 Landscape Spring 2015
being designed is a true reflection of what is being delivered, based upon a sound knowledge of what already exists. The onset of BIM is akin to the evolution of other aspects of design and construction from a craft-based environment into a quality-controlled process. In a craft environment there is a certain unrepeatable quality inherent in the drafting of designs and the creation of the designed object, something unique. However, a crafted item is uncontrolled and so prone to more mistakes than is a regulated and controlled process. For a long time the construction industry has been caught between these two approaches. The challenge for landscape architects is to ensure that they balance the benefits of the craftsperson’s eye with the unflinching quality requirements of a BIM environment. Design flair must be able to manage risk.
Henry Fenby-Taylor is a landscape architect who has specialised in BIM. He works for Colour Urban Design as its landscape BIM system designer and also at Teesside University. Henry is writing the LI’s book on BIM for landscape.
What next? There is no magic bullet or panacea for BIM compliance, but a good step would be to attend the Landscape Insitute’s next BIM Masterclass. These masterclasses are suitable for those looking to enhance their knowledge of BIM as well as those looking to engage with the BIM process for the first time. The masterclasses includes examples of how information is produced, managed and interrogated as well as addressing the benefits and opportunities of BIM for landscape architecture. Find details of these are on the LI website at www landscapeinstitute. co.uk/events/
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Culture By Jill White
Ways of seeing
1 – Invisible Dust at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2011.
The implications of environment change are not immediately visible to us in our everday lives – except in the art-science collaborations curated by Invisible Dust.
B
Image ©: 1 – Simon Steven
y nature, we landscape architects are a collaborative bunch. We’re used to working in teams with other professions, but most often they are related in some way to what we do – engineering, say, or traffic modelling or arboriculture. But how about working collaboratively to change the public’s view of what’s going on in the world, or using it as a campaign tool to lobby for change or for problem solving? The Invisible Dust project is doing exactly that to help us to realise the impact of huge global problems in a quick and easy way, literally finding new ways of seeing. We should all know about rising sea levels, but it would certainly help to appreciate what it will really mean for us if there was a mark on the wall of our local corner shop actually showing the projected future level. Or perhaps seeing a scaled model reenactment of an oil platform spillage staged as a public event at the local swimming pool might really enable us to understand the issue for our own North Sea coastline.
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The trouble with global pollution problems and issues such as future climate change is that they can seem distant and unreal because we cannot ‘see’ the problem right here, right now. This may make us less likely to act personally to make changes to our lives which would make a difference if we all did it together. Most of us don’t even know how many kilowatts of energy we use as individuals every day and thus may do little to reduce our resource use. The Invisible Dust (ID) project works with leading artists and scientists to combine contemporary art with new scientific ideas
that deal with the environment and climate change. It brings together particular scientists and artists, who do not normally meet, to work on key themes. It finds funding for them to create a public event or installation of some kind to help people to ‘see’ more clearly some real problems we are all facing. Its director and curator Alice Sharp explains, ‘Invisible Dust aims to create an understanding of climate change and our environment that moves people and creates space to think positively. Artists are amazing communicators and are able to explore the science in many ways. Whether we are experiencing a sci fi dreamscape, something humorous or
Landscape Spring 2015 59
Culture
2 – HeHe’s ‘Plane Jam’. 3 – ‘Breathe’ by Dryden Goodwin from roof1, commissioned by Invisible Dust
something beautiful, it is our emotional reactions that inspire us to act.’ Proof of her terrific success in this approach has just come with her winning the 2014 PEA (People Environment & Achievement) UK Arts, Fashion, Music & Film Award, which recognises inspirational people who are contributing and making a difference to the green agenda.
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The artists had been in residency at UEA where they collaborated with Peter Brimblecombe, professor of atmospheric chemistry and senior editor of Atmospheric Environment. They also drew on the work of Professor Frank Kelly, director of the environmental research group at King’s College London which has expertise in air pollution, modelling and analysis. ‘Plane Jam’ was one of the winners of a Norwich 60 Landscape Spring 2015
3
Image ©: 2 – Simon Steven
What kinds of projects and events have been attracting a total of 300,000 people to them, and garnering over £1 million of financial sponsorship so far? In May 2011, the ‘Plane Jam’ event was staged in Norwich, created by internationally acclaimed artists Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen (collectively known as HeHe). Wires were strung between buildings and model jets whizzed along them emitting smoke, to demonstrate that if we could actually see the tiny pollutants in a highly visible way we might think twice about routinely using this form of transport. Aviation is one of the major growth areas of future CO2 emissions.
4 – Laura Harrington’s Hagg #2 (Moss Flats), ink on paper 2014. 5 – Nick Crowe’s ‘Drowning of Tuvalu’ at the 2008 Whitstable Biennale.
Eco Award for artworks and outreach at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival in 2011.
Image ©: 4 – Baltic 39 2014
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In a similar vein, the ‘Invisible Breath’ project in 2012 tackled the effect of pollution in London on health, noting that (mainly) traffic pollution causes more premature deaths than passive smoking and traffic accidents combined. As part of this, artist Dryden Goodwin installed a beautiful hand-drawn animation of his own son breathing in and out which was projected onto an enormous wall at St.Thomas’ Hospital in London (opposite the Houses of Parliament) to get across the message about the damage done to children by emissions in London. The project was the result of a collaboration between Goodwin and air pollution scientists at King’s College London. ‘Invisible Breath’ won the Lord Mayor of the City of London Sustainability Award. The hope was that it would make diesel users, amongst others, aware of other issues to be thinking about, besides their mileage and costs. Alice Sharp has a strong track record of great public art events and creations. She was one of the erstwhile managers of the installations on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square alongside Anthony Gormley, many of which certainly excited public debate and discussion. Alice has really seen the usefulness of public art as an awareness generator and educative tool, rather than solely as a mechanism of visual Landscape Spring 2015 61
Culture
6 – Installing the High Water Line project near Bristol’s Clifton Bridge in September 2014. 7 – High Water Line in the centre of Bristol.
enhancement and enjoys the varied nature of the installations which demand attention. For example, ID enabled artist Eve Mosher to carry out ‘HighWaterLine’ in Bristol, where projected future flood level markers were chalked on buildings and streets, a project she has also performed in New York and Miami. Not surprisingly, the flood levels in the aftermath of the recent Hurricane Sandy matched the previously shown chalk lines worryingly well.
Other collaborative projects that ID has curated can be seen at the moment in Greenwich’s National Maritime Museum’s ‘Think Space’. These include Mariele Neudecker’s ‘For Now We See’ deep sea videos, made in collaboration with Professor Alex Rogers, a marine biologist at Oxford University, revealing images 62 Landscape Spring 2015
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Image ©: 7 – Sarah Quick
These projects are bringing together the scientific community, which traditionally has not used campaigning vehicles extensively, with artists who are passionate about particular issues. The lists includes two previous Turner Prize winners – Jeremy Deller, concerning bat conservation and Elizabeth Price with a large- scale video installation of historic sun images. This latter project is the result of her being the first artist in residence at Rutherford Appleton Space Laboratory. Elizabeth Price trawled the Rutherford archives to gather photographic images of the sun’s activity dating back to the 1900s.
8 – Mariele Neudecker’s ‘Cook and Peary’ 2013 at the National Maritime Museum. 9 – HeHe’s ‘Is there a horizon in the deep water’ from March 2011.
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of life on ocean floors some 3000m deep; Eve Mosher’s ‘High Water Line’ and Adam Chodzko’s video ‘Rising’. This latter work, inspired by a recent major flash flooding incident in Newcastle, aims to get viewers to think about what their familiar city surroundings would be like after inundation. Alice Sharp’s work in public art events always has strong community focus (for example ‘Park Lite’ in London’s Clissold Park on which she worked previously featured the ‘Big Chill’ outdoor festival which encouraged community video). However, it was seeing the installation of nine small islands, 2–3m in length along a tidal spit at Whitstable by artist Nick Crowe in 2008, to hit home the issue of sea inundation, that gave her her ‘lightbulb’ moment. She saw how artists could bring to visual life the findings of scientific research. Alice also linked with UEA professor Peter Brimblecombe, who had been studying the effects of air pollution and found some interesting outcomes, such as that playgrounds are sometimes more polluted than their surroundings as carers/parents drop their children off in cars. If they could ‘see’ that pollution, they might change what they were doing to their own children.
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Alice is convinced that if we could literally see or hear what we are doing we would change our behaviour. If you could listen to that virgin rainforest tropical hardwood Landscape Spring 2015 63
Culture
10 – Mariele Neudecker’s Iceberg, May 2013. 11 – Alice Sharp (left) on site at Woodhorn Museum with artist Laura Harrington
7 10
Another project to watch out for this spring is the result of collaboration between the Manchester Museum at Manchester University, where ‘throwaway’ culture in technology is challenged by the ID supported Owl Project – a collective of Steve Symons, Simon Blackmore and Antony Hall. Instead of being made from industrially 64 Landscape Spring 2015
manufactured materials, all kinds of instruments and technological gadgets are being made of sustainable wood in this fun project, further developing the museum’s new collecting theme of ‘trees’. Other future works include the opening of a further exhibition this spring of Elizabeth Price’s sun image work. Alice Sharp is also currently working on bringing together behavioural psychology and the UN Climate Talks in Paris, where ID will be continuing to work its magic of showing 8 us the invisible. Jill White is a landscape architect practising in the southwest. She is a member of the editorial advisory panel of Landscape.
11
Image ©: 10 – Michael Habes
tree crashing to the ground to make your shelves, would you be so keen? A current ID project in this area is concerned with the amount of peat being used by (amongst others) gardeners – a group probably considered as sensitive to their environment. Laura Harrington, artist in residence at Durham University’s geography department (the residency is funded by the Leverhulme Trust) worked alongside Dr Jeff Warburton who is studying fluvial, hydrological and hillslope processes. The residency comprises an exchange of both artistic and scientific skills and practices. They aim to show peat bogs as beautiful, life-supporting places which are brought to vivid life by Harrington’s stunning drawings and photographs, revealing peat as existing in bogs that are places of inner beauty and not as the inert and dead-looking substance being used unnecessarily by many gardeners. It is hoped that if people can actually see the life and beauty of what they are complicit in destroying, consumers’ behaviour will change. Harrington’s work will be exhibited at the Woodhorn Museum, Northumberland this year.
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A Word By Tim Waterman
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pewter-grey luxury sedan is parked on a pea gravel drive edged with tightly-clipped shin-high boxwood hedges. A pedimented entryway, door gloss black and studded with plain but highly polished stainless knobs and furniture, is flanked by two Laurus nobilis lollipop standards in square galvanized containers top-dressed with slate chips. Here we see the full suburban expression of the phenomenon known as ‘blang’– bland meets bling – and we could be anywhere in the world, but the combination, neatly sidestepping any expression of taste either bad or good, is the clearest possible visual code for a particular type of wealth. This is the wealth that dares not speak its name, except in the most minutely read details – hand-burnished cordovan loafers, creamy tailored beige raincoats, polished granite, an indeterminate abstract canvas in earth tones and mauve, a spray of lilies. It’s a form peculiar to a western middle-class and upper middle-class aversion to conspicuous display. Rarely are its symbols, which mumble instead of shouting about wealth, ironically appropriated by the subaltern classes as the trappings of wealth so often are, with the notable exception of the Burberry check (this is perhaps the ur-blang) and the Mercedes grille ornament as worn by rap artists in the 80’s and 90’s. The totems of luxury have always been subverted and parodied by those with the least disposable income, particularly the 66 Landscape Spring 2015
flashiest trappings that only the most spangled celebrities would dare to sport. Wear leopard and you’re either Paris Hilton, a punk, or a prostitute, though Paris is probably wearing a real skin rather than printed velour. Blang flies under the radar, avoiding any message at all except the hushed but urgent hint of money. Our urban buildings and landscapes often used to unabashedly flaunt the wealth of our culture. Gaudy, yes, but the etymology of the word gaudy comes from an old English root meaning ‘joke’ or ‘plaything’, and our landscapes, city or country, were festooned with ornamental swags and statuesque symbolisms of all stripes. Our landscapes were playthings, fantasies, and they expressed good taste, bad taste, and wild, unprecedented taste. Just as often they expressed sensibilities that were decidedly local as well, as did buildings, such as those of Czech Cubism or Belgian Art Nouveau.
With the exception of a few token eruptions of starchitecture, though, our cities are now becoming wastelands of tepid blang as the non-tastes of bankers and developers are expressed with international money by international practices on ever-larger sites. The architectural critic Owen Hatherley, in his A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, calls the prevailing style in architecture ‘pseudomodernism.’ Pseudomodernism, he says, is ‘Postmodernism’s incorporation of a Modernist formal language.’ It includes the usual headline grabbing one-off architectural spectacles, but also the anodyne faceted glass towers whose sole characteristic is bulk (Shard, World Trade Center One), a whole slew of anonymous buildings with barcode façades, and sleek, vaguely Scandi condominium and ‘luxury flat’ developments. It’s these last few categories that I would identify as blang, and landscape architecture in many places is doing its best to keep up with this vapid, meaningless style. The City of London’s landscaping, which years ago Pevsner (I think) described as ‘suburban,’ continues to live up to this accusation to this day, and all our other great cities are being shrubbed up to look like corporate campuses. We’re making places with all the charm and distinction of a business hotel near the airport. So the next time you’re worried that your design might be seen as bad taste, well, you could just be on to something. Don’t let that idea go! Wear a little leopard! Don’t give in to the blang!
Image ©: – Agnese Sanvito
‘Blang’
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