Landscape Journal - Winter 2020: The Ground We Stand On by Landscape, the journal of the Landscape Institute

Issue 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2020

The ground we stand on

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Atle Tveit & Lars TornÃ¸e

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WELCOME

PUBLISHER Darkhorse Design Ltd T (0)20 7323 1931 darkhorsedesign.co.uk tim@darkhorsedesign.co.uk EDITORIAL ADVISORY PANEL Amanda McDermott CMLI, Landscape Architect, 2B Landscape Consultancy Ltd.

Standing our ground

Peter Sheard CMLI, Landscape Architect. John Stuart-Murray FLI, Landscape Architect. Jo Watkins PPLI, Landscape Architect. Jenifer White CMLI, National Landscape Adviser, Historic England. Rosie Wicheloe, Landscape Ecologist, London Wildlife Trust. Holly Birtles CMLI, Associate Landscape Architect B|D. Jaideep Warya CMLI, Landscape Architect,The Landscape Partnership. LANDSCAPE INSTITUTE Commissioning Editor: Paul Lincoln, Executive Director Creative Projects and Publishing paul.lincoln@landscapeinstitute.org Copy Editor: Jill White President: Adam White CEO: Daniel Cook Landscapeinstitute.org @talklandscape landscapeinstitute landscapeinstituteUK Advertising subscription and membership enquiries, call 0330 808 2230 or contact the LI on: contact@landscapeinstitute.org

Landscape is printed on paper sourced from EMAS (Environmental Management and Audit Scheme) certified manufacturers to ensure responsible printing. The views expressed in this journal are those of the contributors and advertisers and not necessarily those of the Landscape Institute, Darkhorse or the Editorial Advisory Panel. While every effort has been made to check the accuracy and validity of the information given in this publication, neither the Institute nor the Publisher accept any responsibility for the subsequent use of this information, for any errors or omissions that it may contain, or for any misunderstandings arising from it.

The ground we stand on is taken for granted. Streets, squares and parks are frequently poorly funded and badly maintained. And the soil beneath our feet rarely commands attention. However, if we are to make progress in tackling climate emergency, we need to think about soils and materials, about where they are made, how they are transported and how we find the funding to properly maintain our landscapes, parks and places. This edition starts with soil. Johanna Gibbon focuses on the depiction of the soil beneath our feet, making a plea for a proper understanding of its value and beauty [page 6]. Kim Wilkie looks at how we manage the land and asks what happens when we push the environment to extremes [p9]. Vron Ware looks at the true cost of making fertiliser [p15] whilst Nikolett Puskas, currently working in Beirut, looks at compost, waste and recycling in an environment where water is in short supply [p18]. James Hitchmough and Michael Livingstone reveal their most recent research on improving soil [p22] and Ruth Holmes looks at the contribution to soil remediation made by the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Project, as it enters a new phase of redevelopment, [p27]. In each edition we feature the latest of landscape education. It is fitting that we look at Writtle, one of our accredited courses, where students have their own plot of land [p32]. We also focus on the cobble. Taken for granted (and often covered in tarmac), their history and

the craft that goes into making and laying them is scrutinised by Will Jennings. [p41]. Our international showcase focuses on two projects from registered practice Hassell in Australia [p49] and in a second article on research, we seek readers’ assistance in tackling overheating in public spaces [p52]. This issue features an expanded LI Life section which covers our CEO’s vision for the new year; a report on the LI Awards 2019 with Sir David Attenborough and an important update on our work on ethics. Throughout the journal we offer glimpses of what people think about when their feet hit the ground. Cycling through Deptford; walking through Regent’s Park; wandering along country lanes; navigating concrete; running around Lake Geneva and trekking in Indonesia bring poetry to the very ground that we stand on. We welcome your feedback and your contributions. If you would like to get in touch please contact Paul Lincoln, commissioning editor: paul.lincoln@landscapeinstitute.org. Paul Lincoln commissioning editor

Issue 1 – 2020

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The ground we stand on Mountain road through fractured rock, 1940. © Graham Sutherland Private collection

Contents BRIEFING

FEATURES

The Ground We Stand On Cycling through Deptford; walking through Regent’s Park; wandering along country lanes; navigating concrete; running around Lake Geneva and trekking in Indonesia; six writers bring poetry to the ground we stand on.

aideep 21 JWarya

cycles Forest Hill to Surrey Quays

31 Jun Huang

Soil vitrine highlights the hidden below ground world of the city

The production of fertiliser has an unhealthy history

Kim Wilkie asks how we manage the land while respecting the stories and character of the last 6,000 years

A climate emergency initiative in Beirut offers important lessons for waste management

Below ground

Robbing the soil

finds beauty in his walk to work

36 Saruhan Mosler

walks creates her own sense of place

40 Amanda Merrell

tackles a mountain on her daily run

Led by the land

Beirut, the ground beneath our feet

46 Diana Souhami

discovers cowslips, verbena and forget-me-nots

51 Angus Bruce

treks on timber in the wilderness of Tasmania and Patagonia

No fines please New research from the University of Sheffield looks at urban planting directly into deep mineral mulches

FEATURES

LI LIFE

56 CEO Report

Scratching the surface

Beneath the city

Soil remediation in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

Will Jennings takes an international perspective on the cobble

Dan Cook looks to 2020

Policy 57

The LI’s asks of government plus updates on Wales and Glover

Landscape Institute 61 Awards 2019

In praise of the new stone age

Structural stone and pebble mosaic at a new Building Centre exhibition

Celebrate the 2019 awards

65 Just landscape A major focus on diversity, ethnicity and representation

Scotland celebrates 67 the legacy of McHarg

Grounds for education

International showcase

Writtle School of Design makes use of its campus grounds and plant collections in a cross‑disciplinary approach to learning

A charette and exhibition mark the work of McHarg

Two projects from Hassell in Australia highlight new developments

a Set of 68 Introducing Global Principles for Landscape Practice

Life on the verge Verge management can contribute to cutting costs, boost biodiversity and deliver a myriad of other public benefits

An important initiative to tackle ethics across the profession

streaming 70 New service, events and training

Landscape practitioners are invited to help develop a new decision-making tool

Training, CPD and new services updates

Mitigating heat stress in public open spaces

SOIL VITRINE

CITY PARKLAND Turf over natural topsoil and subsoil typical of undisturbed parkland soils of London

INDUSTRIAL Typical profile from old railway sidings made up of ash, clinker and chalk fill over London clay

ANTHROPOGENIC Brownfield with fragments of glass and brick over gravels and clay typically supporting self-seeded ruderal vegetation

TREE ROOTING ZONE BENEATH PAVEMENTS Urban tree sand and washed sand creating a profile of structural soil, capable of functioning as a tree rooting zone that can also support pavement construction without settlement

TREE ROOTING ZONE IN OPEN SOIL Manufactured topsoil over sandy subsoil, typical of the Olympic park soils where the soil profiles were reformed post-industrial era with imported media

F E AT U R E By Johanna Gibbons and Tim O’Hare

Below Ground Soil Vitrine was exhibited at the Rethinking the Urban Landscape exhibition at the Building Centre in winter 2015. It was accompanied by an essay Below Ground, city sylviculture and the art and science of city soils, celebrating a long term collaboration, published by J & L Gibbons

1 1. Soil vitrine. © J & L Gibbons

he vitrine highlights the nature of city soil, a living substrate in the hidden and congested below ground world of the city, and a precious resource often ignored that should instead be the primary consideration in advocating sustainability of London’s urban forest. Soil is the foundation of all life, of all biodiversity. It is a dynamic living medium, complex physically and chemically. In cities, it needs particular specification, protection and nurture if it is to support the urban forest. We are enamoured with the design and science of growing mediums that can provide for city sylviculture while supporting the intensity of use and loadings to which London’s pavements are typically subjected everyday. It is a dynamic medium we generally take for granted, the health of which is directly related to our own. Johanna Gibbons is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute, founder of J & L Gibbons LLP established in 1986 and founding Director of Landscape Learn with Neil Davidson. Johanna is a member of advisory panels including Historic England’s Historic Places Panel, HS2’s and The Forestry Commission’s London Forestry and

Woodland Advisory Panel. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck University of London and was recently awarded the prestigious title of ‘Royal Designer for Industry’ (RDI) by the Royal Society of Arts.

Tim O’Hare Associates have been involved with many of the twenty or so high-profile projects featured in the exhibition, including the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, The Garden Bridge, Arundel Square, King’s Cross Central, Eastside City Park, Valencia Parque Central and Barking Riverside.

F E AT U R E By Kim Wilkie

Led by the land Kim Wilkie asks how we manage the land for soil, water and life, while still growing food and respecting the beauty, stories and character of the last 6,000 years

very age is convinced that it faces the end of the world, but ours is more able to achieve it. On top of political and financial fragility, we have an environment pushed so far to extremes that the survival of most natural life is in the balance. Understandably in the climate crisis most attention has been focused on fossil fuels, but how we live in the wider landscape is also key. The vast majority of humans inhabit the temperate zones and in countries like the United Kingdom over 70 per cent of that land is farmed, with a further

13 per cent in forestry (DEFRA). The big question is how to manage the land for soil, water and life, while still growing food and respecting the beauty, stories and character of the last 6,000 years of settlement. The British and Irish Islands have a deep sediment of fossilised lives that makes the landscape hum. These lives have been intimately linked to the geology, climate and a spiritual resonance on the edge of the old human world. The easily sculpted sedimentary layers, low northern light and high rainfall have created a tradition of grass covered earth forms

that date back before the Bronze Age. Burial mounds, fortifications and ceremonial places have set a pattern of working with the land on a scale that has inspired, from Eggardon Hill to Portrack House (the location of the “Garden of Cosmic Speculation”) and Andy Goldsworthy. The great English designed landscapes of Claremont and Studley Royal are part of the tradition and much of our literature and art are bound up in the rolling forms of the land. From Spenser and Hardy to Ravilious and Sutherland, landscape – and the stories it tells – lie at the core of our culture.

1. Eggardon Hill, Dorset. © Kim Wilkie

2. Mountain road through fractured rock, 1940. © Graham Sutherland Private collection

In the United Kingdom over 70 per cent of land is farmed

F E AT U R E

Working with land at this scale makes detailed decoration less relevant. Shapes, shadows and reflections are the key elements. Still water, sculpted slopes and carefully placed trees capture light and patterns over hundreds of acres. Twilight and frost reveal earth forms that the harsh midday sun flattens. Subtle ridge and furrow become a beautiful, Bridget Riley corduroy at dawn and dusk. Simultaneously, the land remains essentially productive under grazed meadows, contoured crops and tended woods and hedges. It is full of life; an animated prospect. These landscapes give a sense of humans

flourishing – not just surviving – with natural systems over thousands of years…until now. Because of the damage caused by Homo sapiens, there is a temptation to wish human beings out of the landscape and to solve the crisis by abandoning farmland to go wild and confining mankind to hydroponicallyfed cities. While urban life can certainly be made much better and more productive, this misses the point of human life as part of nature rather than separate from it. The ecologist Colin Tubbs conducted a fascinating study of biodiversity in Hampshire since the last Ice Age, nearly 12,000 years ago.

While perhaps expecting to find the moment of maximum biodiversity early in the Holocene, before settled farming, Tubbs actually concluded that the most diverse time was in the mid-eighteenth century. The patient agriculture of grazed wet meadows, open downland, coppiced woodland, laid hedges and wood pasture created a mosaic of habitats and a density of wildlife that was greater than the carpet cover of climax woodland. It also produced copious highly nutritious food in a cycle of perpetual fertility. Since the Second World War there has been scramble to industrialise agriculture to feed the world more

4. Grazed pasture in Wales and England © Kim Wilkie

F E AT U R E

5. Ridge and furrow at dusk © Kim Wilkie

Since World War II there has been scramble to industrialise agriculture to feed the world more efficiently and more economically.

efficiently and more economically. But the economics have been based on how much food you can produce per farm labourer rather than per acre of tended land. These are two very different calculations. Labour-intensive small holdings are much more productive per acre than vast tracts of industrialized farms, which rely on diesel and chemicals in order to use less labour. As petroleum products become more expensive and their destructive side effects are better understood, that economic viability falls apart. If government subsidies are reviewed and the economist Dieter Helm’s proposals to tax polluters at source are finally implemented, farmers will no longer be able to afford to saturate land with chemical nitrates and phosphates that destroy the natural biology of the soil. The chemical agriculture of the last seventy years will no longer work. There are a number of farmers who have given up on industrial agriculture and returned to first principles of treating the soil as a living organism. Gabe Brown and Joel Salatin have led the way in the United States and Henry Edmunds has transitioned to a highly productive 2,000 acre farm in Wiltshire. They all

use grazing livestock as a central part of the management and fertilizing of the land, rotating crops with pasture. Graham Harvey in his book Grass-fed Nation: Getting Back The Food We Deserve”(2016) and Judith Schwartz in her Cows Save the Planet (2013), show how livestock grazing on deeprooted leys not only feeds and restores the soil, but also helps to sequester carbon into the ground three times faster than the Amazon rainforest. The methane red herring is a dangerous distraction. Microbial science is revealing extraordinary connections in the Earth’s “skin”. The Australian soil scientist, Dr Christine Jones, and the Cambridge fungal biologist, Merlin Sheldrake, are demonstrating the symbiotic complexity of soil and mycorrhizal fungi and how plants, animals and the atmosphere rely on those relationships. The health of all life, both human and wild, starts at a microbial level. When 83 per cent of our landscape is in farming or forestry and that land is undergoing a fundamental revolution, shouldn’t this be a major focus for landscape architects? Sustaining the natural resources of soil, water and air should be the starting point. It must guide how we cope with extreme

weather; how we grow healthy food; where we allow development to take place; and how we stay sane and perpetuate the beauty and spiritual resonance of our landscape. The lives – human and wild – that depend on that landscape rely on clear heads, broad minds and a geological understanding of time. Kim Wilkie is a landscape architect. The new edition of his book Led by the Land is published by the Pimpernel Press.

A journey of inspiration. Hardscapeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approach to each project involves working with a wide variety of collaborators including artists and designers to create inspirational and unique work for the ground we stand on.

Such an example is Rochester Riverside Development project which was completed in 2019. Earlier in 2018 Artist Christopher Tipping was commissioned by FrancisKnight Public Art Consultancy, Countryside Properties (UK) Ltd and The Hyde Group, to make location-relevant artwork for Phases 1 & 2 of the Rochester Riverside Development.

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F E AT U R E By Vron Ware

Robbing the soil The production of fertiliser has an unhealthy history

f the answer lies in the soil, then what is the question? By asking why and how the history of fertiliser is inseparable from the chronicle of social reform, in Victorian Britain at least, we can better understand why the rapid industrialisation of agriculture had such a catastrophic impact on our ecosystems. In 1845 the town of Andover, Hampshire, was the centre of a national scandal after it emerged that the local workhouse, first opened in 1836, operated a cruel and sadistic regime endured by men, women and children alike. It was the practice in this particular establishment for men and boys to be set to work in the bone yard to produce fertiliser, which was then sold commercially. This unhealthy and unwholesome task entailed pounding animal bones with a 28-pound spiked pole and then collecting the resulting dust. Not only was this backbreaking labour but it was also dangerous, as flying bone chips led to lacerated arms and faces. The bones, stripped of meat but still containing marrow and occasionally gristle, were supplied by a local butcher. In 1840 a medieval burial ground was exhumed in Andover, and there were rumours that human remains were sent to the workhouse. Witnesses recalled a human skeleton suspended in the yard where the men worked. The issue was raised in Parliament by the local MP who declared that he had heard, first hand, that ‘the paupers of the Union were employed in crushing bones, and that, while so employed, they were in the habit of quarrelling with each other about the bones, of extracting the marrow 14

from them, and of gnawing the meat which they sometimes found at their extremities’. So distressing were the details that a public inquiry was ordered the same day. The allegations were found to be true. It emerged during the inquiry that one of the reasons why the workhouse Guardians, a group composed of local landowners, did not object to the practice was that they were able to buy sacks of bone dust at a considerable discount. Fertiliser was at a premium as yields were diminishing in proportion to the pressure to farm ever more intensively. Early soil science had established that plant roots needed calcium phosphate, which could be obtained from bones. These could be burnt or crushed although the new breed of agricultural scientists were aware that, even in this state, the bone meal took a long time to disintegrate in order to be fully absorbed. Then there was the question of where to find sufficient bones to keep pace with demand. The following press report was noted in the ‘Principal Occurrences’ section of the New Annual Register for 1822: ‘It is estimated that more than a million of bushels of human and inhuman bones were imported last year from the continent of Europe into the port of Hull. The neighbourhood of Leipsic, Austerlitz, Waterloo, and of all the places where, during the late bloody war, the principal battles were fought, have been swept alike of the bones of the hero and of the horse which he rode.’

Penny Satire

This satirical drawing of the inmates of the Workhouse fighting over old bones intended for fertiliser was published in The Penny Satire in September 1845. Alongside it was another cartoon of ‘The Commission

of Inquiry discussing the subject over a good dinner’. This depicted seven well nourished gentlemen seated at the dining table, talking amongst themselves while filling their plates and glasses to the full. The images

were jointly captioned: ‘The Andover Bastille’. The Inquiry was ordered after rumours of inmates gnawing rotten bones reached the ears of the local MP, who raised the matter in Parliament. 15

F E AT U R E

1. Bone-pounding box and crusher as used in the Andover Workhouse. An illustration in appendix 26 to the Report from the Select Committee on Andover Union, 1846. © Andover Union

“Some farmers insist on having the dust fine enough to go through a quarter inch sieve, in which case a man can only break 40 or 50 lbs per day. The work should be done under an open shed, and then there is no effluvia, or next to nothing, if the bones are dry. The bones are brought to the master frequently quite green, and if pounded in that state, they will smell, or a paste instead of dust will result.”

By the 1860s, scientists were testing new forms of fertiliser, whether sourced from natural elements like guano (using slave labour) or chemically produced substances. Baron Justus von Liebig, one of the most pre-eminent agrarian chemists, had come to a more sobering conclusion: once an advocate of artificial fertilisers made in factories, he now believed that the exhaustion of the soil caused by modern agriculture was a disaster. In Britain the situation was particularly critical. Thanks to Chadwick’s new system of sewage disposal, aimed at alleviating the intolerable situation in London, human waste was being flushed into the sea. According to Liebig’s calculations, this deprived three and a half million people of nutrition each year. In a revised introduction to one of his most famous works, he accused the country of hanging ‘like a vampire’ on the throat of Europe:

‘Great Britain robs all other countries of the condition of their fertility. She has already ransacked the battlefields of Leipzig, Waterloo and the Crimea for bones. She has ploughed up and used the skeletons of many generations accumulated in the catacombs of Sicily.’ Liebig had decided that the systematic extraction of minerals from the soil without replacing the nutrients absorbed by the body amounted to little more than robbery of the earth; more than that, it was an assault on humans’ metabolic relationship with nature. ‘What the soil holds in its womb’, he wrote, ‘is not the wealth of today’s generation because it belongs to future generations.’ Karl Marx, who had long been an avid reader of Liebig’s work, took careful note of this change of direction. It caused him to re-think his earlier optimism that scientific progress would eventually result in

the overthrow of capitalism and he adapted the concept of robbery to his own analysis of what he called ‘the metabolic rift’. In the first volume of Capital (1867) he states: ‘All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil.’ Today, most gardeners would consider it essential to have a box of blood, fish and bone in their arsenal, but would never dream of applying processed human waste to their roses, let alone tomatoes. Yet increasingly farmers – in the UK and elsewhere – are permitted to use treated sewage sludge on their land. A good source of nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as organic matter, biosolids are slowly re-entering the food chain. It is too soon to know what sort of progress this might represent, if any. Vron Ware is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Kingston University

TWIN

Extraordinary for Landscape Architects Photo: Drifter Bench in Lava Grey

This Drifter Bench contains 650 kg of household plastic waste. This is equivalent to the annual amount produced by 15 households. source: Plastic Soup Foundation & The Central Statistical OfďŹ ce

Streetlife introduce the TWIN-concept: an ambitious mission to provide a sustainable alternative for all hardwood options in the Streetlife Collection. With the introduction of four new materials ( Lava Grey, All Black, Cloudy Grey, Bamboo Brown) TWIN offers landscape architects more freedom of choice while on the other hand, Streetlife is taking the next step in creating more sustainable public spaces.

Green Circular Bench in Bamboo Brown

Rough&Ready Curved Bench in All Black

Solid Serif Chaise Longue in Cloudy Grey

Heavy-Heavy Bench in Lava Grey

Cliffhanger Bench in Bamboo Brown

RESEARCH By Nikolett Puskas

Beirut, the ground beneath our feet

A climate emergency initiative in Beirut offers important lessons for waste management and community organisation globally

eirut triggers distinct thoughts in everybody. It is a truly vital city at its heart, thanks to its people, its fluidity and its many informal systems. The way in which the urban landscape evolved here is extremely rich and intricate, due especially to the impact of the Lebanese civil war and the many displaced people that the country is hosting. When I look at pictures of the old Beirut, I feel heartache for the tram that used to operate, for the old villas, the greenery, the seashore and for the time when there was a flourishing river. 18

Today’s landscape is intensely dense, full of high-rise buildings and in its most crowded area, Burj Hammoud (62,500 inhabitants/km2, more than three times the Beirut-average1 ) it can be difficult to see the sky, unless going up to a rooftop. There is an extreme duality here since the end of the civil war, one of decaying buildings and poverty, and the other of absolute luxury. Despite the two extremes, recent headlines and conversations with local people justify the conclusion that the ground beneath all our feet here is a ‘garbage mountain’. The waste crisis peaked in 2015 and has

not been properly addressed ever since. It is also a health crisis, not only is the soil and thus groundwater polluted, but it is hazardous to swim in the sea and because it is still common practise also to burn waste, the air is dangerously polluted. It is in this context that I am conducting fieldwork for my PhD at University College London’s (UCL) Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) and a member of the RELIEF Centre2 under Professor Henrietta Moore’s supervision, locally working with Professor Yaser Abunnasr at the American University of Beirut’s (AUB)

ediger, D. and H Lukic, A. (2009) The Armenian Quarters in Beirut, Bourj Hammoud and Karm El Zeitoun. ETH Studio Basel 2 The RELIEF Centre aims to speed up transitions to sustainable, prosperous societies in the context of mass displacement, to improve the quality of people’s lives. The RELIEF Centre brings Lebanese and UK institutions and expertise together to address this challenge using cutting-edge research and innovation. 1

1. Beirut vista © Nikolett Puskas

2. Beirut river today, in dry season © Nikolett Puskas

60% of waste is generated in Beirut and Mount Lebanon – over

85%

is going to landfill

ttps://www.aub.edu. h lb/natureconservation/ Documents/guide_ to_municipal_solid_ waste_management. pdf#search=lebanon%20 recycle%2010%2D12

Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management. Working with people in the Nor Marash neighbourhood in Bourj Hammoud, the first step has been to co-define what makes ‘the good life’ and what contributes to wellbeing in the context of public spaces in the neighbourhood, whilst voting on the most pressing infrastructural topic (amongst waste, water, energy and food). 62 per cent of those consulted voted that it was waste, which is unsurprising in light of the on-going waste crisis and especially since people here are living at the heart of it. The Bourj Hammoud landfill reached its capacity this summer and was supposed to be closed down, however the government is planning to extend it as a temporary solution. On the other side, the neighbourhood is bordered by the Beirut River, which today is a combination of sludge and waste. Besides the visual impact, people are struck by the unimaginable smell emanating from all the different waste. Waste is a global challenge and Lebanon is one of the countries where this has already become completely problematic due to the lack of a comprehensive waste management plan, appropriate regulation or legislation; decent knowledge transfer and a failure to recognise the impact of the climate emergency. Moreover,

according to AUB research3, only 10-12 per cent of the country’s overall waste could not be recycled or composted, whilst the reality is that about 60 per cent of waste is generated in Beirut and Mount Lebanon – of which over 85 per cent is going to landfill. Composting is a particularly interesting subject due to the excellent climatic conditions here. This rather bleak outline offers the opportunity for Lebanese creativity and eagerness to act towards reaching the 10 per cent of waste that cannot be recycled. In the absence of high-level action to address the issue, a growing number of more local initiatives are in place for both recycling and composting. These initiatives are led by NGOs and concerned individuals. For example Live Love Recycle has its own app for pick-up, which they do via e-bikes, providing a tailored and convenient service. Ziad Abi Chaker is perhaps the most wellknown Lebanese activist in the area of waste management. He installed recycling islands Beirut-wide, creates Eco-Boards and furniture from plastic waste, recycles glass (which is saving the jobs of the last six glassblowers of Lebanon), whilst also working with composting and vertical green walls. Another initiative by Joslin Kehdy pays particular attention to a seemingly tiny item of rubbish, which in reality

is also a substantial contributor to pollution: the cigarette butt. They make surfboards out of them! Spreading knowledge and information on all these initiatives is essential. My PhD is based on action research via collaboration with various actors, from local people in a neighbourhood to the municipality and existing initiatives such as entrepreneurs, NGOs, innovators and ‘experts’). The research is tackling issues defined by the people who are users of the particular public space, so they can have a sense of ownership and responsibility. It is a way to map and connect the actors, explore possible paths to bridge the bottom-up with the top-down and to facilitate informal learning, so people are enabled to understand better what actions are they capable of taking in order to enhance their built environment. The next step is a co-design workshop in collaboration with the FastForward2030 Lebanon network to come up with local naturebased solutions to waste-related challenges, as both this network and my research are addressing a number of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The outcomes will feed in to a physical game being co-developed with a Lebanese artist collective, to be taken back to the streets of Nor Marash and played with local people,

3. People collecting and sorting waste daily at Martyr Square. © Nikolett Puskas

as a facilitator tool to learn by play. Focusing on waste, exploring causes of pollution and its effects on both our physical and mental wellbeing, how it impacts people on an individual, family, community and collective level are all crucially important to collectively reduce, reuse, recycle and compost, for example, We can thus learn how to transform a burden (i.e. organic ‘waste’) into an asset (i.e. fertiliser). There needs to be a deeper understanding, as well as a collaboratively developed narrative, one which holds the transformative power of turning the bleak landscape into a scene of opportunities and possibilities. Conducting research in the real world always has uncertainties and currently my fieldwork is paused due to the thawra (revolution), which started on 17th October of this year. Yet the amazing energy and inspiring initiatives emerging from it offer me opportunities for critical reflection and analysis. Many of us had micro-scale initiatives of simply bringing our own gloves and bin bags and just starting to collect all the trash, which was accumulating on the streets in great volumes. This is a very simple act at individual level, showing care for our immediate environment. Under the umbrella, resources and organization of Recycle Lebanon, this grew into a full-scale daily operation of collection and sorting at Martyr’s Square, where hundreds of people turned up at 8 am every morning, including families with children. This is an example the whole world can and should learn 20

from. Especially since, according to Greenpeace, during a mere 33 days people managed to recycle an amount almost equal to what has ever been recycled in the country.4 Here is a lesson to all who ever wonder if we as individuals can have an impact. The recycling initiative at Martyr’s Square then mushroomed into a group of tents establishing a circular economy hub, Regenerate Lebanon. Built block-by-block, they cover and address a growing range of crucial issues for a regenerative future. Today, besides the self-organised waste management, there is a zero-waste food kitchen providing free meals daily, free drinking water via UV filtering, green energy from solar panels and bicycle power, a living green wall and a growing number of native plants potted around aiming to create urban micro-forests. All of this is realised through individual donations and volunteering. The extreme conditions in Lebanon triggered the longest on‑going protest of people, which seems to be an incubator of initiatives growing faster than ever before and achieving a great impact. This tale should remind us all that it is people that make places and we always have the power of doing something both in our individual as well as professional capacities, to contribute to a better environment and a better future. In the alarming era of climate emergency, Lebanon is showing the world good practice in how to act upon certain pressing challenges and do it fast – for we do

not have much time left to weave our transformative narrative. Local initiatives RELIEF Centre, https://www.relief-centre.org Regenerate Lebanon, https://www.regeneratelebanon.com/, https://recyclelebanon.com/ programmes/regenerate-lebanon-map/ Cedar Environmental, http://cedarenv.com/ Further reading Hediger, D., Lukic, A. (2009) The Armenian Quarters in Beirut, Bourj Hammoud and Karm El Zeitoun. ETH Studio Basel. Ragab, T. S. (2011) The crisis of cultural identity in rehabilitating historic Beirut-downtown. Cities 28, 107-114. Saleh, E. (2016) The master cockroach: Scrap metal and Syrian labour in Beirut’s informal economy. Contemporary Levant 1:2, 93-107. Sisco, L., Monzer, S., Farajalla, N., Bashour, I., Saoud, P. (2017) Roof top gardens as a means to use recycled waste and A/C condensate and reduce temperature variation in buildings. Building and Environment 117, 127-134. Verhoeven, H. (Ed.) (2018) Environmental Politics in the Middle East. Local Struggles, Global Connections. Hurst & Company, London. Nikolett Puskas is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Global Prosperity and holds an MSc in leadership for global sustainable cities, an MA in sustainable design and a BSc in light industrial engineering.

In just 33 days people recycled an amount almost equal to what has ever been recycled in the country

pplies to all of A Lebanon, various cities countrywide self-organized cleaning and recycling.

BRIEFING

The Ground We Stand On Jaideep Warya

cycles again and again from Forest Hill to Surrey Quays For many years now, my journey to work has followed this routine: after cycling a short stretch of sleepy, residential Sunderland Road, I take a deep breath and plunge headfirst onto the alwaysbusy South Circular, turning off at the first opportunity onto Brockley Road. Travelling north over what I like to call ‘hit-and-miss’ asphalt1, I cycle downhill past schools, supermarkets,

churches, petrol stations, cafes, pubs and several outposts of that venerable South London institution, Morley’s. At Brockley Station I take a detour through Coulgate Street, with its numerous cute cafes that open out onto a shared surface of textured concrete blocks in multiple colours2. If I then survive a bizarre and unnecessary double roundabout

Goldsmiths University and onto Clifton Rise. So far, so asphalt. But here things get interesting, both ground-wise and journey-wise; for Clifton Rise is, as the name suggests, an inappropriately steep little stretch of road paved with reddish-brown tumbled concrete setts4. It is inappropriate not because of its steepness, but because at the

bottom of this ramp-like incline there is always a terrifying hundred-yard stretch of reversing cars, speeding cyclists and children being dragged dreary-eyed to Childeric Primary School, with mischievous pets in tow. Having somehow negotiated this, I cross a line of dropped kerbs (a cyclist’s best friends) into Fordham

Park and onto well-set resin-bonded gravel5 which makes a pleasant crumbling sound as I cycle over it. At a junction in Fordham Park I slide over smooth polished concrete blocks6 (risky in the rain with thin tyres) and then over tactile paving7 at a

known as Brockley Cross, I get to cycle over more asphalt3 on Shardeloes Road, flanked by seemingly endless rows of terraces and cramped trees, leading to a junction on Lewisham Way, where I turn left to go past

pedestrian crossing on Sanford Street, after which I’m back on asphalt for the length of pedestrianized Woodpecker Road. I then enter Folkestone Gardens and get to cycle a short distance on a designated cycle route (Quietway1) which is hilly, winding and surfaced partly in smooth, red macadam8. At Trendley’s Junction north of the park, I trundle over more smooth,

polished concrete blocks and then it’s asphalt again all the way to the office. In the height of summer I cycle faster, not weighed down by layers of clothing. In winter, when the snow homogenises all surfaces into a single, treacherous mix of white ice and muddy slush9, I suddenly become grateful for traffic lights, where I catch

a breath and warm myself in the heat generated by the engines of London Buses. In heavy rainstorms, I shelter under large old trees with dense canopies. Every day, though, I get to test my brakes at Clifton Rise, solve the Brockley double-roundabout riddle and, best of all, receive thanks from several fine lollipop men and women for not running over schoolchildren in my haste to try and reach work on time. Jaideep Warya is a landscape architect at the Landscape Partnership. 21

F E AT U R E By James Hitchmough and Michael Livingstone

No fines please New research looks at urban planting directly into deep mineral mulches

lanting into “stony substrates” became fashionable in Germany as part of the ‘Silbersommer’ pre-designed planting mixes developed by the Arbeitskreis Pflanzenverwendung (study group for plant use and planting design) from the early 2000s. These mixes arose from a long tradition of nature-like designed

“steppe” planting into dry substrates. The mixes are sold by nurseries who participated in their development, in part a response to the diminution of planting design skills in German landscape architecture. All of these mixes have been evaluated in public spaces throughout Germany for at least 5 years before their release. We were interested in knowing more about how these approaches might

work in the UK climate, where the intervals between rainfall events are much shorter. We set a PhD research team (James Hitchmough as project lead, with Nigel Dunnett and Ross Cameron) and Michael Livingstone as the PhD researcher. Financial support came from Boningale Nurseries and logistical support from the Green Estate Landscape in Sheffield. In collaboration with Nigel and Michael,

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1. The main experiments for the deep gravel mulching study in Sheffield in 2016, two years after planting. No irrigation, fertilising or hand weeding was undertaken during the four years of the experiment. © James Hitchmough

2. The tennis court planting into deep gravel and underlying fractured tarmac in late June 2019. Despite the wide plant spacing weed invasion has been next to zero. © James Hitchmough

we designed four mixes (20 species per mix type), which we would use in the research and that Bonningale would sell as a commercial product (see https://www.boningale.co.uk/ floratopia/) as the research proceeded. There was an evergreen, drier mix and an evergreen less dry mix, and the same split for winter deciduous species. Tolerance of wet soils was relative, bearing in mind that all species had to be able to grow in a 150‑200mm depth of mineral aggregate on top of a soil base. We wanted to simplify the system as much as possible and avoid unnecessarily complex substrate mixes (with high mixing and embodied energy costs and the risk of weed seed contamination from green waste components from the outset). Since roots would be able to access moisture in the soil beneath, we focused on two essentially “fines free” minerals; 4-10 mm diameter pea gravel and a similar sized crushed limestone that was not absolutely fines free. Water-holding capacity in the mulch itself is extremely low.

We had a number of core research questions, including; – what effect did mineral mulch type have on establishment and growth of the different species used? – what effect did mineral mulch type have on germination and establishment of wind-blown weed seeds? One hundred and ninety two linear metres of 2m wide planting beds were set up at Manor Top in Sheffield, with a 150-200mm deep layer of mineral aggregate overlying site topsoil 1 . Plants were established primarily by planting green roof plugs specifically grown by Boningale, plus some P9s [9cm square pots]. Most plants were established in autumn 2014 with some top up planting in summer 2015. The experiment ran from 2015 to 2019. No hand weeding was undertaken during this period. The research is still being written up and results are presented here in very general terms to avoid future conflict with publication in academic journals. As the experiment progressed, it became obvious

that weed establishment was very slow and slowest on the pea gravel. Fines between large mineral particles provide a continuity of water films that facilitate weed seed germination (Hitchmough, et al., 2001) and reduce seedlings mortality until their roots reach the soil below. As the research progressed, when the opportunity presented itself, we set up case studies to test the system under varying climatic conditions across the world.

Case study 1

Temperate maritime climate

Converted tennis court near Sheffield Michael Livingstone Two years into my PhD research, I gave a workshop on the system for the Landscape Institute. One of the attendees, planting designer Chrissie Dale, asked me to collaborate on a project converting a disused tennis court into a gravel garden. The client was particularly keen for it to require minimal weeding, as she already had a large garden to look after. I saw this as a good opportunity to apply my research to a larger area outside of experimental plots. I decided the easiest and cheapest option for dealing with the tarmac surface of the tennis court was to break it up but leave it in situ. This was a good “urban” test, laying gravel mulch at depths of up to 400 mm (minimum 200mm) across the tarmac rubble. A highly drought-tolerant mix with many steppe species, such as Scutellaria baicalensis and Oenothera macrocarpa ssp. glauca were planted. Two years after planting, the system has proved to be almost completely weed-free with virtually no weeding. It has a very long flowering season, starting with Pulsatilla and Primula veris in spring and flowering continuously until autumn with lateflowering prairie species.

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3. Planting the prairie vegetation at the Horniman in November 2017. It is critical to remove the ubiquitous weed seedings growing on the top of the pots before planting, to avoid “inoculating” the planting site with weeds.

Case study 2

Temperate maritime climate

Horniman Museum, London

James Hitchmough Wes Shaw, Head Gardener at the Horniman, contacted me in 2016 about a planting to interpret the relationship of indigenous cultures with grassland vegetation. The planting site was small (400m2 ) but knowing how challenging it is for maintenance staff to distinguish between weeds and planted species in complex herbaceous planting, it was an ideal site to test deep gravel mulches. I designed three plant communities: a dry prairie (USA) and two south African communities. The top 150mm of the soil surface was stripped off and replaced by the

same depth of pea gravel. We started planting the project on 3 November 2017 with randomised P9s at approximately 300mm centres. In 2019 the planting project won Horticulture Week’s “Best Planting Design” award and is much featured and discussed on social media.

Seedling weed establishment has been minimal and maintenance likewise. Despite unusually hot summers, irrigation was not required in either 2018 or 2019. The vegetation is attractive for a very long season from March to November.

4. The same area of planting in August 2019 without any irrigation. Plants are all stress- tolerating species that persist best on relatively dry soils, for example, the pink Echinacea tennesseensis, and the yellow Echinacea paradoxa. The planting is attractive over a long season, April to November. © James Hitchmough

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5. The “New Silk Road” garden in late April 2019, two weeks after the completion of planting, showing the mineral mulch across the whole site (the underplanting beneath the trees uses a coarse organic debris mulch). © James Hitchmough

6. The New Silk Road steppe planting in July 2019. The species in this area are all plants of moderately to very dry habitats, for example, the blue flowered Beijing native Delphinium grandiflorum. © James Hitchmough

Case study 3

Continental temperate “The New Silk Road Garden”, Beijing 2019 International Horticultural Expo James Hitchmough In 2017, I was asked to design one of this site’s four permanent “master” gardens (the others by SLA Copenhagen, West 8, and Hargreaves). Tom Stuart Smith and I collaborated, he focused on structures and hard surfaces, I on planting design. The scheme (1500m2 ) is essentially a planted woodland with a dry steppe-like vegetation surrounded by drainage swales, woodland edges and understories. Mulches are a new idea in China, as low-cost unskilled labour is available for hand weeding, but this only works with planted monocultures where it is easy to distinguish between the planted and unplanted. The planting was complex involving repeating individuals of species in three layers with a woodland layer on

top. I had just undertaken 2 years of funded research project for a major nursery and landscape company in Beijing, looking at how deep gravel mulches affected plant establishment and irrigation needs in this hot, but relatively high summer rain climate. With deep gravel mulching we found no irrigation whatsoever was required, whereas the same types of planting in public space in Beijing were irrigated at least once a week and often once a day.

After many delays, planting was completed in April 2019 just a few days before the opening, using P9’s at approximately 12-15 plants/ m2. Pre-planting, a 120mm layer of crushed rock (approximately 10‑20mm diameter) mulch was laid over the underlying soil and planted into 5 . The planting was irrigated by hand during the establishment period and results were excellent, despite 25°C plus temperatures in April.

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7. The semi-shaded woodland edges and path edge drainage swales in October 2019, with Symphyotrichum oblongifolius (Aromatic Aster) (violet) and Eurybia divaricarta (White Wood Aster) (white). © James Hitchmough

Case study 4

Near Mediterranean climate Melbourne, Australia, The “Woody Meadow Project” James Hitchmough In 2013 I was asked by Melbourne City Council to develop meadow-like vegetation, but given the climatic predictions for this city, I suggested we should look instead at using post fire, resprouting native shrubs to create a multi-layered triennially coppiced woody equivalent; the “Woody Meadow”. In 2014, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, we secured funding from the City to set up two demonstration-research sites to trial the concept. In addition to weed control benefits, many of the native shrub species are least affected by fungal root pathogens when growing in highly aerated, free draining substrates. We used volcanic scoria as a relatively fines free, locally available, low cost mulch substrate. 26

The sites were planted using a 200mm layer of this in 2015, resulting in excellent plant establishment and performance without irrigation and minimal seedling weed invasion. A new research collaboration between Sheffield and Melbourne University and a much wider range of Australian Local Government agencies has been developed and we are hoping to evaluate deep mineral mulching throughout Australia.

Conclusion Our experiences suggest that as long as you select appropriate stress tolerant species, planting into deep mineral mulches can work anywhere in the world and it reduces maintenance by keeping invading weed seedlings to the absolute minimum possible. This level of weed control only works when fines are absent or close to absent. There is now good research based evidence in the German literature (Cassian Schmidt personal communication) that the presence or fines or colloidal organic matter at the surface of plantings is directly correlated with increased weeding costs into perpetuity. This raises issues of sustainability in terms of the availability of suitable mineral

substrates and the processes to remove fines from them, but this must be balanced against long term “invisible” energy and other resource inputs necessary to remove weeds from “fine dense” surfaces, such as green roof type substrates. Rounded particles have the advantage of being mobile and any winter weed seedling establishment can be managed by raking the surface after the cutting down of the dead herbaceous stems, on a sunny day in March. As the diameter of mineral particles increases (within reason) weed seedling establishment decreases. Providing the mineral mulches are fines free and 120mm or deeper, worm casting onto the surface does not appear to occur, hence the mulches are permanent and continue to function in the longer term. James Hitchmough is Professor of Horticultural Ecology in the Dept. of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield Michael Livingstone is a PhD student in the Dept. of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield, interested in the ecosystems service benefits of designed plant communities.

References Hitchmough, J.D., Kendle, A.D., and Paraskevopoulou, A. (2001) Seedling emergence, survival and initial growth in low productivity urban “waste” soils; a comparison of British forbs and grasses with continental European forbs. Urban Ecosystems, 5, 4, 285-308

F E AT U R E By Ruth Holmes

Scratching the surface – soil remediation in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

As developments accelerate around the Park, the project’s head of landscape Ruth Holmes explains why getting the soil right for 2012 has left an important legacy 1. Aerial photograph of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park 2019 – 7 years on since the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games showing the establishment of the landscape and the iconic venues. © LLDC

https://www.olympic. org/news/the-greatestshow-on-earth

rom the sky, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park can be seen with its blanket of green and gold divided by ribbons of blue and grey, the setting for the ‘greatest show on earth1’. So much has been written about the Park and the legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, yet the story goes much deeper when you scratch the surface.

The site was previously heavily polluted following a century of industrial use. A challenge central to the 2012 vision was to provide a significantly improved soil base to the Olympic Park (now Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park) as a starting point for the planting that would define the 2012 Games, as well as inspire a green legacy beyond. At an early stage in the planning, crucial land reclamation

decisions were made to include a complex and arduous process of soil washing, decontamination and production which would take years to complete. The site soils contained potential chemical contaminants (such as heavy metals, hydrocarbons, asbestos), physical contaminants (glass, nails) and biological contaminants (Japanese Knotweed) which needed to be extracted through 27

mobile remedial technology. The alternative of removing and replacing the soil would have been costly and contrary to the spirit of the 2012 Games and the regeneration of the site. The technical detail presented in the Olympic Soil Strategy2 written by Tim O’Hare was, at the time, revolutionary. It made the case for the benefits of good soil design as an integrated part of the design process, highlighting the socio-economic and environmental value. The project to transform this part of London had backing from the UK Government and from the Mayor of London to make it a highly sustainable endeavour. Visitors today enjoy this 21st century landscape, welcoming everyone with porous boundaries and accessible routes through an undulating landscape. The soils not only support planting and habitat, but also perform biological functions through fungal and bacterial activity; environmental interaction through gaseous exchange and carbon sequestration; water attenuation and filtration; offer a platform for construction; protection of buried cultural heritage and facilitate food production. The parklands were designed to be accessible and

welcoming with a great deal of work to engineer the landforms, lawns, meadows, planting and vistas. Seven years on since the Games, visitors who enjoy the Park have an experience that is based on the soils that were created from “soil hospitals” from 2007 to 2010. The use of the term ‘soil hospital3’ is powerful, as it reflects the sense of crisis and distress of what had been done to the soil in the area. The industrial processes, rail and waterway transportation had left the soil diseased and contaminated. This needed to be treated using technical expertise to restore and heal a landscape, creating something new, viable and vital. The soil hospitals treated 100,000s of tonnes of soil using soil washing, bioremediation and stabilisation/solidification technology to meet the immovable deadline. The soil washing process utilised the difference in grain sizes and density of the materials to separate the different particles by means of screens, hydrocyclones and upstream classification. This enabled the removal of the fine particles that the contaminants adhered to, into a filter-cake residue, thus minimising contaminated soil that needed to be disposed off-site. Clever soil chemistry or Thermal Desorption

helped extract the pollutants by heating the soil to the point where the contaminating compounds vaporise and the resulting gases removed. The treated soil then created the landforms with a manufactured top layer that could support the planting and habitat. This ‘cover system’ isolated the contamination from site operatives, end-users and the wider environment to form a ‘Human Health Layer’ which is indicated with marker layer of orange mesh. A manufactured 450mm layer of soil covers the Park (deeper in areas with trees) to sustain an array of different species. These carefully-blended soil mixes of mineral and organic components, create the displays and ecological areas. The neighbourhoods and areas under development benefit from the remediated soil designed for a range of land uses. Schemes must now work within carefully defined parameters to avoid creating pollutant links to the site and this can include the introduction of more sensitive end uses4. Each new development must consider how it will accommodate piercing through the marker layer to the treated layer beneath, which is suitable for landform but not as a growing medium due to the residual contamination. Operations

2. One of the two soil hospitals which formed part of the enabling works, processing tonnes of contaminated soil to be reused on site to create the landforms and remediating the ground for future land uses. © LLDC

The soil hospitals treated 100,000s of tonnes of soil

https://webarchive. nationalarchives.gov. uk/20130228084152/ http://learninglegacy. london2012.com/ publications/olympicpark-soil-strategy. php?stylesheet=normal 3 http://www. landscapethejournal.org/ Technical-Olympic-Soil 4 https://www. queenelizabetholympicpark. co.uk/~/media/lldc/ local%20plan/local%20 plan%20examination%20 documents/local%20 strategy%20papers/ ls2%20legacy%20 communities%20 scheme%20revised%20 remediation%20 strategy%20 2013updated%20date.pdf 2

3. The top layer of on-site manufactured soils being laid with the orange mesh marker layer to indicated the remediated soil beneath. © Tim O’Hare

4. The meadows on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park are designed to be high impact, low intervention. This is only possible due to the species selection and soil constituents being designed together to reach optimum conditions for the visual effect and biological function. © Nigel Dunnett

http://www. leabridge.org.uk/ nature-and-openspace/poppy-estate. html 6 http://www.timohareassociates.com/ case-study/queenelizabeth-olympicpark-stratford-london/ 7 https://www. atkinsglobal.com/ en-gb/media-centre/ features/enablingolympic-park 5

range from planting another tree through to setting down foundations for buildings or structures. So, what are the continuing challenges? Species rich lawns were created on soil that was designed to drain within 30 minutes of a heavy downpour. We are now treating this soil to improve its water retention in light of the hotter, drier climatic conditions London is now facing. Trees that have structural soil that can cope with the heavy footfall are managed to achieve a good balance of water, nutrients and mycorrhiza to keep the trees in good health. The lower-nutrient soils planting such as the Fantasticology meadow continue to be incredibly successful. Fantasticology is possibly one of the largest colour segregated meadows in the UK. Not only is it still visibly the artwork that was created for the time of the 2012 Games, but it is also alive with invertebrates and we hope that it will become part of the UCL East site, part of an academic living landscape laboratory. Park management is minimal but carefully planned, to maximise the floriferous impact and biodiversity. The species choice combined with the soil design has created meadows that flow down to the water’s edge, with the London Stadium as their backdrop. Not far from the Park, experiments with soils are being pioneered by John Little in community gardens in Clapton Park Estate5 which, in collaboration with UCL, could advance sustainable and economic practices researched by landscape students. The soils have also supported temporary ‘Stitch’ landscapes, so called because they stitch the Park into the developments along its edges. The planting has surrounded the hoardings of the development plots across the site. Nigel Dunnett’s planting scheme has kept the Park vibrant and delightful with the nutrient poor, steppe-like conditions helping the wide diversity of plant species to thrive with less maintenance. This has achieved displays that have long seasonal interest and which change dynamically throughout the year. The transformation of the site above ground has only been possible

due to the transformation below the surface. The nine different soil types designed by soil consultants6 provide for many future land uses. These manufactured soils were carefully constructed from the most sustainable materials with meticulous monitoring and inspection of the soil handling and management. The experts involved in the creation of the Park continue to spread and develop the technical know-how based on the highprofile nature of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This put soil remediation operations in the spotlight as part of the ‘most sustainable Games’. The lessons learned have been transferred to many other projects and will hopefully inspire more focus on responsible soil management and designed soil creation in the future7. The Park continues to welcome people

who want gain insight to tackle the significant issues facing soils and the landscapes across the world. Useful Website Links for technical detail: https://www.groundsure.com/ resources/newsbringing-brownfieldsites-back-use-olympic-parks/ https://www.nparks.gov.sg/-/media/ cuge/ebook/citygreen/cg6/cg6_06.pdf https://www.prolandscapermagazine. com/olympic-park-soil-strategyremains-a-draw-for-green-spaceprofessionals/ http://www.nigeldunnett.com/ olympic-park/ Ruth Holmes is a landscape architect and head of landscape for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. 29

“The ground we stand on… …is often steeped in history.”

Client: Calderdale Council Landscape Architects: Gillespies Contractor: GRAHAM Construction

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

Since 1779, The Piece Hall has stood proudly at the heart of Halifax. Originally built to support the trading of ‘pieces’ of cloth, it has been a meeting point of Halifax’s commercial, civic and cultural life for almost 250 years. In an ambitious and exciting new chapter, The Piece Hall has been reimagined as a new cultural and commercial centre. Extensive works were undertaken to sensitively and expertly conserve the Grade I listed building. Hardscape supplied 5,500 square metres of Forest Pennant paving and setts for the central courtyard together with a blend of four Portuguese granites and Carlow Irish Blue Limestone. Portuguese Alpendurada granite steps were installed around the central square to provide an elegant frame for the Forest Pennant paving, leading up to the main building. Twelve solid granite benches and forty euroform-w Iroko timber-topped granite benches, featuring a galvanised steel framework, which was left exposed beneath the 30 Iroko timber to reveal The Piece Hall logo, were also installed.

BRIEFING

The Ground We Stand On Jun Huang

finds beauty in his walk to work

My journey to work in Central London consists of three parts: driving, a short train journey, and then a walk to office. I normally choose walking over tube or bus so that I can connect with nature, experience life at a slower pace and compose poems and designs in my mind while exercising. For someone who rarely watches films, the walk is a series of unexpected reality shows. From time to time, thoughts come and go like mountain spring flows.

Apart from springtime when I walk through Marylebone Gardens for the spectacular cherry blossom, Upper Montagu Street is the first section of real urban walk in the “city wall” of Marylebone Road. Open, calm and intimate this plain, good streetscape

leads to the first highlight, Montagu Square, where John Lennon lived in 1968. I enjoy walking along this green route in all seasons, embraced by tree canopies, watching falling leaves drifting by the windows. Colder days see me turn east on Upper Montagu Street into Crawford Street, following the warmth offered by the morning sun. The corner flower shop always opens early, sending scents into the colourful street. fine, I carry on and turn left Wigmore Street, the grandest en route. As wide as the equally cosmopolitan Baker Street, it is much more charming despite fewer trees, thanks to its sophisticated streetscape and high quality of architecture. The Edwardian Baroque Debenhams Building is perhaps one of the most beautiful buildings in London. Carrying on eastwards to Dorset Street, Chiltern Street cannot be missed. This elegant street has a distinctive character of red brick frontages, classic proportions and a mix of boutique shops: it is probably the prettiest in London at 8:30 in the morning.

Manchester Square is the milestone. Despite the cars all around, this small but nicely preserved Georgian square, anchored by the delightful Wallace Museum, feels like a destination. Its circular garden is filled with mature plane, lime, magnolia and cherry trees. Scale is the true master here and harmony is the result. In Duke Street lives my secret pet, a crawling crocodile on the steps of Lacoste Boutique that few would notice. Checking that the crocodile is

I always walk down Welbeck Street to Henrietta Place, which then leads to Cavendish Square. Why don’t I avoid this chaotic little street packed with scaffolding, trucks, builders and bacon and diesel mixed air? Perhaps I need some chaotic excitement for a change before getting into a day of real life, or I just couldn’t resist the utopian scene from this end of Henrietta Place looking east – two rows of great white buildings complemented by bold green clouds. My office block rises proudly above all, shooting into the blue sky.

Jun Huang is the Design Partner of Wei Yang & Partners, a London based award-winning practice driven by a commitment to promoting design excellence, creating truly sustainable environments and liveable cities.

F E AT U R E By Saruhan Mosler

Grounds for education Writtle School of Design makes use of its campus grounds and plant collections in a cross‑disciplinary approach to learning

he soil, water, and air quality that support our habitats and biodiversity are the fundamental elements of landscape and is foremost in the teaching of students in landscape. As future landscape professionals, they need to understand and value the ground we stand on and respond to it as designers. The 220 hectares of campus grounds at Writtle University College (WUC), set within an historic landscape, offer great opportunities to understand these fundamental elements and provide a rich and varied facility for teaching and

learning. They form an integral part of the methodology of our accredited undergraduate and postgraduate landscape courses, first established in 1995. Writtle School of Design’s (WSD) cross-disciplinary approach to the curriculum reflects the ethos of land-based studies evolving from its inception as a land-based college in 1893, to its university college status today 2 . With a tradition of linking agriculture, horticulture, conservation and landscape architecture, WSD offers a truly grounded and responsive learning experience for future

landscape professionals addressing environmental emergency. Today, it is more important than ever that land-based professions work across disciplines to develop and support sustainable practice. Landscape architects constantly need to reconsider the human relationship

1. Writtle University College’s campus in Chelmsford. © WSD 2019

2. As then ‘Writtle Agricultural College’ during WWII where the front lawn was planted with cabbage as part of the “Dig for victory” campaign. © WSD 2019

3. Landscape architecture students are preparing the plots on the grounds. © WSD 2019

4. Writtle University College’s wildlife rich campus meadows provide an opportunity to discuss diverse plant communities, seasonality and ecological design. © WSD 2019

5. Annual meadow on nutrient rich clay soil, typical of the London and Essex region. © WSD 2019

6: Soil laboratory MA Landscape Architecture students are working in the soil laboratory to test the soil and the plants. © WSD 2019

7. Soil results. © WSD 2019

Located in the outskirts of Chelmsford, Essex, the Writtle campus and wider estate offer a rich variety of historic and contemporary landscape typologies.

with the land and landscape issues to develop creative and holistic approaches to new demands. Working with the principles of social and ecological systems, landscape architects use design to mitigate and adapt responses to the changes created by the increasing impacts of population growth, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, food insecurity, and unsustainable land use and management. Located in the outskirts of Chelmsford, Essex, the Writtle campus and wider estate offer a rich variety of historic and contemporary landscape typologies, including woodlands, productive landscapes such as orchards, agricultural land, meadows, together with the riparian habitats of the River Wid, with our own agricultural reservoir and historic moat 1 . Our tree collection and ornamental gardens with agricultural land and conservation areas create not least a wonderful place to study, but a range of biodiverse landscape character types that underpin our approach to learning 4 and 5 . Beneath the ground, historic layers of our past are evident in the moated King John’s Hunting Lodge, and the remains of Roman settlements have been revealed in recent archaeological digs, forming part of the tangible and intangible heritage in the campus landscape. The campus is crossed by public footpaths and linked by cycle routes to a network of parks and river systems to Writtle village and the City of Chelmsford, creating community links and access for members of the public. The grounds function as part of a wider walkable network as well as providing a calm setting for student life and wellbeing. There are five main soil types across the campus, which traditionally has been used for agricultural food production or horticultural production and ornamental planting. Changes in agricultural policies and approaches to land stewardship have further diversified our approaches to and provided opportunities for developing conservation expertise and sustainable approaches to landscape management. MA students recently undertook a research in their landscape ecology

and ecosystem services module where they prepared landscape character analysis reports for the wider campus grounds to mitigate the impacts of flooding of River Wid. Students are involved with climateresponsive planting in the grounds. In our new management plan for the grounds, there are increased tree plantings to sequester carbon and also to buffer our streams and mitigate noise and particulate pollutants from the road. The scale of our grounds, range of habitats, land use and approaches to land management offer opportunity, but also competition for resource, and

as such provide a living case study in which students can engage. With its landscape design-based programme, WSD’s approach to learning places a strong emphasis on linking theory to practice. Landscape architecture and garden design theories are applied to both hypothetical and real contexts, and our grounds provide immediate access to a changing landscape for this purpose. Undergraduate landscape architecture students designed the site around the reservoir with a sustainable and climate responsive design approach. Our cross-disciplinary approach benefits learning and is facilitated through 33

our ability to work closely with other disciplines taught at WSD, both in the Sciences and the Arts and Humanities. Our students, for example, benefit from stewarding experimental plots for growing plants in practical and artistic ways, ensuring they have a practical as well of theoretical understanding of plants. With Arts disciplines, ideas of placemaking, sustainable design and arts- based approaches to design foster a deep understanding of the practical and technical. They are further explored through the making of beautiful ephemeral artwork across the campus. The sciences, too, are explored in the settings of research glasshouses, soil laboratories. MLA first year students have to test the soil in the glasshouses before they start to plan their plots for practice. Our ornamental gardens are developing with a more ecological approach, planting for pollinators and habitat as well as for people and students propagate tender perennial plants and monitor their success over our increasingly mild winters. 6 and 7 . The grounds, therefore, function as a site for learning about land use, landscape and the dynamics of change over time. Established expertise in land based fields at WUC, such as horticulture and conservation, has enabled the landscape architecture programmes to emerge at Writtle. It is supported by the University’s long established knowledge of soil, drainage and the technical aspects of growing, which form the bedrock of the profession. For example, Year 1 undergraduate students start their practical training with “digging” the grounds to understand the qualities of the soil in their designated plots and learn about the soil structure and the micro ecologies of the landscape through soil tests 9 . The campus grounds at Writtle provide opportunities not only to engage with the practical in-depth knowledge of ecological systems, but also give students a unique opportunity to observe and learn from the dynamic changes and phenomena in the landscape and create public and community arts projects. The public art “Labyrinth project” was a co-production of artist Jim Buchanan 34

8. Students enjoying the labyrinth in 2006 in a taught session exploring spatial design and again in 2018 where ecological processes are gently changing the profile, form and plant community. © WSD 2019

9. Landscape architecture students are preparing the plots on the grounds. © WSD 2019

10. Originally constructed by students with land artist Jim Buchanan in 2001, the labyrinth at WUC contained rammed earth monoliths, and became the focus of a conference considering ‘Soil as a Sculptural Medium’. © WSD 2019

11. In 2012 the campus at WUC became the setting for 2EmmaToc/ Writtle Calling by Matthew Butcher and Melissa Appleton of Postworks, who orchestrated a range of performances and radio broadcasts concerning art, architecture location and oration. © WSD 2019

12. The ephemeral art project. Students are preparing a collaborative public art installation the grounds. © WSD 2019

13. Students learn topographic surveying in their first year as a foundation to understanding topography on more challenging sites. © WSD 2019

and the Writtle students and wider community on the grounds and in the medieval barn in the campus. The project as a learning tool was published as a book chapter by two WSD lecturers in 2016. Through our art and design programmes, science and art are linked through landscape design teaching and learning, where engaging with the public and their responses to landscape interventions and artistic installations can be measured and understood. Students

develop a sensitivity to those for whom they might well be designing, as well as learning methods to engage stakeholders in real-life design scenarios. They observe, interpret, respond and reflect through critical analysis and creativity by using art and environmental studies, with installations and interventions within the grounds 8 , 10 , 11 and 12 . WSD has hosted a number of art research projects through collaborations with artists, architects and performers

14. The university college reservoir provides a challenging site for design students while introducing them to sustainable approaches to design and construction. © WSD 2019

15. MLA student Mark Gooding working in the green house. © WSD 2019

16. MLA student Robert Marshall at the campus where plant identifications take place. © WSD 2019

17. BSc Landscape Architecture student George Witten working on the plots. © WSD 2019

18. BSc Landscape Architecture student Sharon Chilvers analysing landscape values at King John Hunting Grounds on the campus. © WSD 2019

where the grounds have become the setting for artworks, or the soil itself becomes land art, our turf-cut labyrinth being just one example that has persisted and shows change over time. Landscape architecture students learn the basics of topographic surveying on varied undulating parts of the campus grounds and are introduced to the principles of sustainable construction and design using the slopes of the university college reservoir, which was developed in 2001. The reservoir has proved a valuable resource 14 providing an excellent example of successional plant communities. The site links to experimental meadow areas through a series of established hedgerows and remnants of once substantial orchards. The reservoir also provides an opportunity to examine a regraded landscape on typical Essex clay soils and the connection to the campus sites complex hydrological system. The distinctive regional character of the landscape encompassed by the campus also provides the opportunity for students to learn the principles of Landscape Character Assessment. This includes gently undulating glacial till farmland plateau landscape with the rivers Can and Wid and its relatively large floodplains located in the river valley as one of the three major rivers in the region. It has historic integrity with a strong vernacular such as Writtle village reflecting the regional identity; remnants of medieval originated land use such as ancient woodlands; dispersed hamlets, moats and footpaths surround the WUC campus. Aided by lecture staff and local professionals, students are able to consider scenarios for areas of the campus and develop the skills needed to read a landscape and consider the underlying narrative, whilst developing an understanding of landscape value at a number of levels. The green spaces and water bodies also provide opportunities for capturing the transient phenomena present throughout the seasons and consider the notion of tranquillity and its connection to wellbeing and mindfulness.

Mark Gooding (MLA, Master in Landscape Architecture, 2nd year student): More than just reciting Latin names, the outdoor botanical studio is rich in specimen trees and shrubs as well as the extensive glasshouses, stimulating in- depth knowledge. For our construction module, we 15 were given a reservoir to west of the grounds, poorly constructed from an old gravel pit. The project was set around remediating the surrounds and creating an accessible space for ecological education.

Robert Marshall (MLA, Master in Landscape Architecture, 1st year student): Just by stepping out of the studio, I can connect with multiple landscape environments. These include new and established gardens in a variety of styles, along with trial meadowland areas, wildlife corridors 16 and WUC’s own reservoir. WUC campus also has an exceptional variety of established plant specimens that help showcase their design merit and application.

George Witten (BSc Landscape Architecture, 3rd year student): The smell of a border of Sarcococca confusa emitting a strong sweet aroma in spring as you walk by, or the feel of clay as you plunge a boot into deep wet soil in autumn and remove only your bare foot; light 17 permeating through a canopy of birch trees or the atmosphere of a woodland grove. These are all things that can be spoken about in a classroom, but are not the same as experiencing first-hand outdoors.

Sharon Chilvers (BSc Landscape Architecture, 2nd year Student): I am a mature student at Writtle University College studying Landscape Architecture and use the extensive grounds at Writtle most days in conjunction with my studies, as well as for my own personal 18 learning and understanding. For my assignment in Landscape Perceptions module, I am analysing the historic site ‘King John’s Hunting Lodge’ located within the campus grounds, so I am able to visit the site as many times as I need to.

BRIEFING

The Ground We Stand On Saruhan Mosler

walks to work and creates her own sense of place

I walk to work at least three times a week; it takes me 40 minutes to go to Writtle University College in Chelmsford where I work as a lecturer. The first 10-15 minutes is in the urban terrain; my walk starts on a busy

main street jammed with cars and continues through the neighbourhood where I do the school run. At this point I can still choose between walking or car, and the decision comes quick as the park lures me to walk in. So I cross another busy main street and continue towards the river and the park. Every time I step into the park, leaving the streets, noise and polluted air to the green, tranquil, slow landscape; it feels as I enter a parallel realm – separated by the tree cover and the river. So every time I am on the path, I become one of the ingredients of this landscape as Lippard elaborates in the Lure of the Local, where I readjust my senses and body to inhabit in this tranquil realm. The rest of my walk follows the river corridor, along

1. An autumn day. © Saruhan Mosler

2. Bridge by the stream. © Saruhan Mosler

the floodplain through the fields and remnants of ancient woodlands until I reach the college grounds. I prefer walking because it is the perfect way of keeping me mentally and physically well, balancing and recalibrating my brain through the rhythm and the pace. As Gehl explains, it is a goal-oriented walk, experiencing the world on foot, giving me the flexibility to control, create opportunities and encountering every time something new. As walking becomes a habitual behaviour as my daily commuting pattern, I create a stronger sense of place through my walking route. During these walks, I realise certain characteristics of the landscape that I wouldn’t normally get a sense in a vehicle. Topography and the land form, even the slight changes in the elevation is legible, in Lynch’s terms where I can read the heights and the edges, see the landmarks and the nodes, even the sound marks in the landscape such as the water flowing faster after the rain. I enjoy the experiential qualities of my walk – observing wildlife and the seasonal changes the landscape unfolds for me; foraging berries at the end of summer and watching the autumn colours are beautiful, refreshing and inspiring me for the rest of a long day. Lippard, L. (1997) The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society: The Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York: The New Press. Gehl, J. (2011) Life between building: Using public space. Washington: Island Press.

Lynch, K. (1960) The Image of the city. Massachusetts, Cambridge: MIT Press.

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F E AT U R E By Theo Plowman

Life on the verge

Verge management can contribute to cutting costs, boost biodiversity and deliver a myriad of other public benefits

ince the Second World War 97%1 of the UK’s wildflower rich meadowland has been wiped out by urban development and modern agricultural methods. With it, there has been a devastating decline in biodiversity. We might think the main solution would be mass restoration of these meadows, cutting huge swathes through the countryside but an oft forgotten landscape may be key to reversing this drastic decline. There are nearly 313,5002 miles of rural road verges across the country, these strips of greenery are, for the 23 million people commuting to work

by road every day, often their only daily contact with nature. Sadly, these spaces are usually a uniform and bland monoculture of grass with scant traces of life. Yet this could all be changing with increased attention, action and thought going into revitalising our road verges. New guidelines3 released this year by Plantlife highlight how taking simple actions could allow Britain’s verges to flourish with more than 400bn wildflowers. The guidance stipulates a different number of cuts depending on the type of grass but has several key principles. Cutting is to happen after July and vitally the removal of all grass cuttings to lower soil fertility

and allow a more diverse range of wildflowers to flourish. In essence the soil at verges is too fertile and through simple, cost effective measures this can be reversed. Currently, much of the UK’s grass road verges are either cut too often and at the wrong time of year, or abandoned to poor quality scrub. Currently grass cuttings are left creating a thick layer which inhibits growth of anything other than hardy grasses, the soil nutrient levels also rocket, creating a vicious cycle of rapidly growing grass. Authorities managing verges face a costly, losing battle to try and stem the cycle.

There are nearly 313,500 miles of rural road verges used by 23 million commuters each day.

F E AT U R E

1. A summer bloom of flowers on a verge. © Plantlife

2. A wildflower verge in Ulster maintained by Mangnificent Meadows. © Plantlife

3. Wild flowers on the verge at the entrance to Portmore Golf Club. 4. A summer bloom of flowers on a verge. © Plantlife

Sightings of Small Blue Butterflies have grown in number, going from around 11 to 158.

1 https://www. plantlife.org.uk/ download_file/ force/2271/2218 2 http://www. tarkacountrytrust.org. uk/love-b.html 3 https://www. plantlife.org.uk/uk/ourwork/publications/roadverge-managementguide 4 https://butterflyconservation.org/sites/ default/files/2019-10/ Phil%20Sterling%20 Butterfly%20 Conservation%20 -%20Grassland%20 Creation%20-%20%20 FINAL.pdf

The benefits to nature are abundant and apparent, the transformative work done on verges across the country has delivered great boosts in biodiversity – in particular the number and diversity of flowering plants. They are also relatively quick in terms of timescales; great results can be achieved in under a decade. An example of this in practice is the work done by Butterfly Conservation on the A354 Weymouth Relief Road in Dorset. Construction of this road in 2011 was underpinned by the creation of wildlife friendly verges with a scattering of topsoil designed to avoid high fertility build-ups and a wildflower seed plant. The reduction of topsoil allowed wildflowers to thrive and the savings to construction were a welcome benefit. Since then a seminatural chalk grassland has flourished and species counts within the verge have sky-rocketed. Butterflies in particular have grown in number with sightings of Small Blue’s going from around 11 to 158.4 The benefits are not only for nature but for people and place. For many road verges provide a small window into nature, providing a wonderful display of seasonal flowers. The

procession of colour through the year keeps us in touch with the changing seasons and provides us with a sense of place, it has even been claimed that roadside verge meadows reduce driver stress significantly. With the release of the guidance in September this year there is renewed

hope that those involved in verge management will understand how these measures can contribute to cutting costs boost biodiversity and deliver a myriad of other public benefits. Theo Plowman is policy and influencing manager at the Landscape Institute.

BRIEFING

The Ground We Stand On Amanda Merrell

tackles a mountain on her daily run

In my 20s I worked long hours in an advertising agency in Soho in London. I had a gym membership but it was unused, so instead I started running home straight after work as a way to de‑stress and to keep fit. I ran beside roads clogged with traffic on uneven pavements pockmarked with bad repairs. Every 10 metres or so a side road would intersect, and I had to jog on the spot, waiting for the lights to change. I never had any idea of how far I ran or how fast I was going. I just ran to get home.

Thirty years on I am still running – but now it’s different. London is a place I occasionally visit and my career is all but over. “Life 2”, as I call it, is still only a conversation topic, waiting to start at 60. Now I live in the Swiss Alps and I run to think. A typical run is from Siviez to the Cleuson Dam, on a steep track that climbs 650 metres to a concrete wall that holds the water back, towering 60 metres above the pine trees. It is 5 long, hard kilometres to the top. Mountains pitch up on either side. When I run, I take the mountain on. A duel, where I fight to run faster than last time and the mountain tries to stop me any way it can. Tactics are everything. The first kilometre is a nice smooth road, gentle in incline. It is important not to run too fast – I know I will pay later. Quickly the tarmac disappears, and the track becomes rough. Big grey stones poke out from the mud. This is the first test. I can’t lift my eyes from the place where my feet are going

1. Running to Veysonaz. © Andrew Spalding

2. The Cleuson Dam. © Amanda Merrell

3. The Cleuson Dam from the running trail. © Amanda Merrell

because every stone is a potential trip hazard. Better to go slow and not fall. Three kilometres up I cross the first of many streams – the water is freezing and I need to be careful. This is test two. If I slip, my feet will get wet and blisters will form. The track gets very steep and my heart is trying to escape from my ribcage. 4km up is the final and most difficult test. The track goes into a series of tunnels carved into the rock. Daylight is replaced by pitch black. The temperature instantly falls. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I can see that water has part turned to ice. My feet slip and I pitch forward. I reach out to the walls to steady myself. When I reach daylight again, I know I am nearly done. One last push up the steep road to the top of the wall. The duel is finished. For the first time I can lift my eyes to see the view. A secret lake the colour of an aquamarine set in a ring of mountains. I check my Garmin. Looking for small signs of improvements. Looking for virtual medals. Has the mountain won? Somehow without me knowing my thoughts have been neatly ordered. I don’t have the answers but the questions are clearer. Amanda Merrell is a marketing and communications consultant

F E AT U R E By Will Jennings

Beneath the city 1

The humble cobble is often confined to tourist centres in British cities, but Will Jennings takes an international perspective and argues for a re-valuation of this historic building material 1. Yorkstone setts at Roker, Sunderland. Kevin Johnson

All pictures are copyright the author quoted alongside their caption

couple of years ago, National Express ran a publicity-inducing poll asking for the “prettiest streets in Britain”, presumably in the hope it would lead to an uplift in daytrips across the country. The coaches themselves would struggle to navigate most of the 19 winning streets, as the public favoured narrow passages, steep inclines and pedestrianised historic town centres. At number one were the tightly squeezed Shambles in York, an

irregular grid of tourist shops with nostalgic stones, cobbles and setts underfoot. The list largely comprised streets of similar paving to the Shambles, with the narrow incline of Frome’s Catherine Hill, Haworth’s Brontëtastic Main Street and the Tudorlicious Elm Street of Norwich all making the cut. It’s also worth noting that most of the winning streets were firmly located on Britain’s tourist map, and when visitors pound streets they are hunting for unique, personal and memorable experiences. The irregular

Unearthed during routine maintenance work in the Georgian Quarter of Liverpool, these wooden setts have supported the public highway for 200 years. They were used in wealthy areas as they result in less noise than cart wheels on stone setts. David McKenna

F E AT U R E

tread of stone setts and cobbles certainly make for an immediate and concentrated experience. They can be so slippery when wet and the unevenness when dry can twist ankles and jar the teeth of those in wheelchairs and pushchairs. With our towns featuring the seemingly endless smoothness of asphalt, poured concrete and prefabricated paving slabs, the idiosyncrasies of stone fit the touristic gaze very well, as progress compounds the memories and the otherness of the trip. This is perhaps why travellers to cities across mainland Europe from Brasov to Berlin come back with romantic photographs and memories of meandering stone streets. In Lisbon, a place impossible to visit without posting at least one photograph of the beautiful artistic pavements online, there is even a statue of a paver crafting a cube sett, the Monument to the Calceteiro “to the pavers who build the ground we tread”. It is also why, upon returning home to greyer, familiar streets scarred with water, gas, cable and drainage urban-surgery, it’s so easy to wonder why Britain isn’t similarly paved.

The oldest known paved road was laid 4,600 years ago, connecting Cairo to a basalt quarry 69kms away. Later, and more famously, the Romans created a network across their empire, sprawling military and trade tentacles of control, and you can channel your inner Centurian by heading to Wheeldale and marching the 50km of (disputed) Roman road. It wasn’t until the early 18th century with the rise of Turnpike Trusts that systematic road construction and organised maintenance was begun, with toll gate income funding maintenance and improvements. Until then roads in built up areas were constructed of paving of cobble stones, but frequently poorly constructed using irregular sized stones on a rubble foundation of rotten materials, contractors saving money by increasing joint sizes, leading to pavements shifting and collapsing into a ruptured mess. General road maintenance for non-stone routes consisted of piling small rocks in the centre of the road and letting traffic slowly distribute and flatten it over time, but it was becoming obvious that there was more of an art and skill to roadmaking than this. As urbanisation

and industrialisation progressed, road reform was becoming political and a series of Parliamentary committees on highways over the early 1800s sought to improve the badly maintained and non-standardised network. Thomas Telford and John Macadam both submitted evidence to these reports, and a professional rivalry between the two Scots offered solutions for the cambered substructure of roads, both engineers suggesting finely chipped stones which compress over time to form a hard surface for traffic. These streets, however well made, still created dry dust in summer and mud through winter, neither hugely desired in wealthier districts where granite setts became the norm, with Telford paving Hanover Square in 1824. Harder wearing, and useful on busier routes such as to and from East India Docks, they comprised of four-inch cube setts offering a firmer grip for horses than stone slabs, which easily wore down to a slippery shine. But where there wasn’t dust there was noise, with the noise from stone sett streets angering nearby populations and with setts also dislodging under the wheels

You know a city has its priorities right when they have a sculpture dedicated to paving stone workers. Monument to the Calceteiro in Lisbon, by Sérgio Stichini, and an example of their work. It’s not every week you get to tread on works of art. Robert Kwolek

The oldest known paved road was laid 4,600 years ago, connecting Cairo to a basalt quarry.

By the 1920s concrete roads were the norm for heavy traffic areas.

F E AT U R E

The ground I stand on is uneven, damp, and constantly changing. In my part of the Philippines, some spaces are beautifully manicured, the rest are wild and unruly. Once in a while I go for a walk and, distracted by an unusual sight or a new sweet scent, I am suddenly on a different path. At the end, I find a new living thing growing from inside a man-made crevice - fungus or seasonal orchids – and I feel just wonderful.

This is an image taken on the Albert Dock, Liverpool, between the modern museums and galleries. (RIBA, Open Eye). As I walk through the development I can’t help but notice the contrast in textures and materials below my feet. The way the light is hitting the larger flagstone creating a shadow cast along it due to its change in level, like a set of stairs. The cobbles that are set within a bed of moss giving us a clue to their age and history.

Georgia Perrine

Alix Riding

Our innovative granite cube ground plane at LSBU public realm draws inspiration from David Bomberg’s ‘Racehorses’ painting. Rob Beswick, Founder + Director B|D landscape architects

lifton-Taylor, A. C (1965) The Pattern of English Building. (Second edition). London: B.T. Batsford.

of heavy traffic. As a remedy, pavers installed parallel “tramway” tracks of slab blocks 6 to 9 inches wide, with the gridded setts filling the rest of the carriageway. In 1869 our streets started their path to smoothness with the Val de Travers Asphalte Paving Company resurfacing London’s Threadneedle Street, followed by a further 32kms of the capital over the next two years. By the 1920s concrete roads were the norm for heavy traffic areas, with a constant trend towards a monotonous

sprawl of asphalt and concrete ever since. Certainly, our towns do have sporadic moments of cobbles and setts underfoot, not only in the aforementioned National Express selection, but in heritage areas such as Covent Garden, which reintroduced cobbles for its 1980 relaunch; or occasional private and wealthy developments like More London and Granary Square. But when a decaying and under-maintained asphalt teasingly reveals stones trying to force

themselves back to the surface, it carries all kinds of romantic nostalgia to our consciousness, because there is something powerful seeing uniquely shaped stones under a city of prefabricated panels, poured concrete and sheet glass. Beneath the city, cobbles. So, what is it about cobbles that so induces the romantic, and what do they possess that represents what we have lost? Certainly the uneven surface with dappling sunlight and rain, has a certain rustic quality. This was of interest to proponents of the postwar Townscape movement such as Nikolaus Pevsner and Gordon Cullen, who were adapting qualities of the picturesque into an urban “floorscape” of mixed materials, human scale and montaged materials. We can also draw from Alec Clifton-Taylor’s musings on bricks in his 1965 book The Pattern of English Building1. He considers the textures and “antimonumental” size of individual bricks as offering a “human and intimate quality”, which perhaps we can also read into the humble cobble. There is, after all, some kind of universally understandable logic to an idea of cities composed of numerous small parts, like Lego conjoining to a grander set piece. Other qualities we may imbue into the cobble, as Richard Sennett similarly does when discussing bricks in The Craftsman (2008), is a sense of honesty and integrity. Perhaps they represent us, a unique individual within a crowd of similar others, insignificant alone but strong together, perhaps that is why they carry that sense of longing, nostalgia and significance. Ridley Scott recognised these nostalgia-inducing powers of the cobble in his famous 1973 Hovis advertisement, in which a boy slowly pushes his bicycle up Gold Hill in Shaftsbury (6th on the National Express list) as the sun glistens off shiny stones. Compressed into those few seconds were childhood longing, an imagined lost Britain and the notional scent of freshly baked bread. The ripple of cobbles underfoot offering meaningful foundations to this warm nostalgia. The heritage glow of the advert was followed by urban centres adopting a same romantic 43

F E AT U R E

approach to place. Throughout the 1980s, systematic prettification of urban realm used olde-looking street furniture, lighting and materials, conjuring up some indeterminate VictorioGeorgian atmosphere. This was the period when a“traditional” aesthetic took hold throughout identikit pub chains; new electric street lights designed to look like gas-lamps but with built-in hanging basket brackets were liberally installed. No pretty town centre was complete without rustic cobbles or setts to complete the Anglo-Disney aesthetic. This is the world into which Covent Garden was reimagined, while new tourist attractions like Blists Hill and Ironbridge popped up in deindustrialised landscapes, an experiential picturesque imagining of the past as replacement for the disintegrating present. As Joseph Samuels discusses in his excellent book Theatre of Memory (1994) cobbles were strategically deployed across industrial docks, landscaped gardens and precinct developments, even giving a “vernacular look to the car parks”. There has always been a peculiarly British process of ripping out evidence of the coarseness of history to replace it with a smoother built landscape for quicker transactions and wipecleanable experiences, only to then paint this new blandscape with a controlled version of history. As opposed to Cullen’s townscape use of cobbles, adding vernacular and personality to localities, Samuels argues the 1980s cobbles – often concrete simulations – were to “give instant maturity”, a kind of plug-in authenticity to place. But there are other histories of the cobble, not just Hovis and horses. In the Paris of 1968, setts from Haussman’s boulevards were imbued with the power of protest, students ripping up stone cubes and transforming them into missiles as they reclaimed the streets. “Sous les pavés, la plage!”, (“Beneath the city, the beach”) read revolutionary graffiti referring to both the emerging sand the removed setts were bedded into, as well as suggesting a beachlike freedom secreted from view by the rigid conformity of the city. The 44

cobbles of Paris are so iconic that two years ago Parisian entrepreneur Margaux Sainte-Lagüe bought five tonnes of the stones removed for street resurfacing, and now sells them one by one as art objects, including a 150€ gilded cube. Another has “sous les pavés” scrawled in red, white and blue, the stone’s bottom half encased in sand as if freshly plucked from the beach to be displayed by the bourgeoisie as mantelpiece sculpture, instead of having it weaponised against them. Beneath the city, profit. The places in Britain which entered the twentieth century with cobbled streets and not the modern skim of tarmac or asphalt were often those that had been left

behind – whether a whole village, urban cul-de-sac or unused corner of a junction. The very matter of the street acting as an index of power, value and ideological hierarchy. New stories, too, can be embedded into a groundscape made up of so many individual pieces, much more easily than a vast unifying surface. Across Berlin, stolpersteine2, commemorative brass plaques in the pavement, honour victims of the Shoah who had resided nearby, powerfully presenting individual histories at one with the individuality and human-qualities of the surrounding cobbles. Look also at how the pavements of Barcelona, Lisbon and Rio have become as identifiable images of place as has the London

In Berlin, it is the simplest patterns which resonate most… from bringing modern archaeology to the surface, to the occasional scattered absence of individual units, in favour of 100x100mm brass memorial plaques2. Berlin’s setts provide constant and poignant reminders of the past, attaching historical connection to place in its purest and most visceral form. Charlie Pierson CMLI, Landscape Architect, RPS

Welsh Granite, Caernarfon Possibly the last public use of Welsh Granite setts. All the stone: slate and granite, for the 2008 shared space at Castle Square, Caernarfon came from within 30 miles of the town. David McKenna

Honeycomb shaped pavers and a bronze inlay featuring a worker bee. It could only be Manchester city centre! Emily Beedham

In Paris, 1968, setts from Haussman’s boulevards were imbued with the power of protest, students ripping up stone cubes using them as missiles as they reclaimed the streets. “Sous les pavés, la plage!”

F E AT U R E

here are now T STOLPERSTEINE (lit. “stumbling stones or blocks”) in at least 1200 places in Germany, as well as in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine. http://www. stolpersteine.eu/en/ home/

skyline. In my view, to recognise a place by an artfully crafted, democratic and hardworking material of the pavement is far healthier than by the phantasmagoric, spectacular baubles of a financial elite. There is a current trend in underpressure British high streets to commission trendy designers to create surface-applied funky supergraphics as band-aids of forced joy over decaying surfaces. Both Croydon and Waltham Forest, for example, have recently applied a relatively cheap fix of colourful shapes and colour which rapidly dissipates after a few months of traffic, fumes and feet. It may be a more expensive to use real stone, irregularity and ingenuity into the townscape rather than such temporary solution, but in my mind immensely preferable, as stones aging and unsettling over time only add to an urban genius loci rather than blight the thoroughfare. There are ways in which landscape designers can rework techniques and materials of the past in contemporary and intelligent ways, and not just use them in the 1980s theme-park way to distract from an increasing neoliberal void. So here’s to the cobble and sett. Whether remnant from the past slowly revealed as asphalt crumbles, or a polished piece of history as part of the tourist offer; a modern reinvention by thoughtful landscape architects or even the 1980s ye-olde-townscape reintroduction – here’s to the unexpected, the solidity, the geology and the craft. Here’s also to a future landscape using skills and the materials of the past as a way of thinking forwards, of creating streets of impact and art. Here’s to an experience of towns and cities built with permanence and care. At a time when citizens seem to have less agency than ever over the political and physical space around them, perhaps the sense of the individual and unique, through cobbles’ aesthetics and the craft that goes into paving them, suggests they are a suitable material for our age. Will Jennings is a writer and visual artist interested in connections between culture, politics, history and architecture. willjennings.info

When work on the masterplan commenced, King’s Cross had a number of incomplete areas of stone setts, a visible but incomplete remnant of the surfacing that had been laid to provide a tough working surface. At the start of the construction works the existing setts from across the site were lifted, catalogued by area and a strategy for reuse prepared. This broadly meant relaying them as ‘frames’ around the historic buildings and, where appropriate, as an attractive, tactile ‘hazard warning’ around tree planting, cycle racks and other simile features across the site. At the entrances to the buildings, the setts were cut in half and laid with the sawn and then fine picked face exposed to provide a DDA compliant surface. Generally, though the setts were not laid en masse as their uneven nature impinged on free mobility for all. The design of Granary Square seeks to create a modern space which acknowledges the history of the site without trying to recreate it. The porphyry paving was selected for its warm patina of colour to complement the original cobbles. The reclaimed stone setts were laid as tree surrounds, around benches to demarcate the end of the fountains and also around historic features including the capstans and railway tracks. To improve the accessibility of the surface, the setts used at building entrances had a sawn, fine picked surface. Martha Alker, Townshend Landscape Architects

This line of dark stone setts forms a visual link between Carlisle Castle and Tullie House Museum, and it also represents Hadrian’s Wall. Also set into the traditional red sandstone paving are inscribed stones to represent places, milestones and forts along the Wall.

When I first cast eyes on them, I was shocked. It was the early 2000s, and I’d never seen anything like the Kimberley sandstone cobbles of Melbourne’s Federation Square – a riot of pink from afar, with astounding detail up close, ranging from delicate striations of salmon pink through to desert blocks of iron-red. These pavers reflect the complexity of the Australian landscape, and its slow geological transformations over time, accompanied by water, fire and drought. They are, unashamedly, of this continent.

Ali Moffatt, Eden Environment

Emma Sheppard-Simms

BRIEFING

The Ground We Stand On Diana Souhami

discovers cowslips, verbena and forget-me-nots in between the concrete and red tiles of the Barbican high walk The station for the Barbican exits on to the dense traffic of Aldersgate Street. There is a way to avoid the miasma of fumes and pollutants. By the exit, footprints captioned ‘cleaner air’ point up steps that lead across a road bridge, onto a highwalk and into 35 acres of traffic-free urban landscape. This highwalk, called the Podium, is 6 metres above ground. There is the sound of water, fountains and birds, a strange sense of disorientation and a unique concrete vista of jagged skyscrapers, terrace blocks, bridges, lakes and gardens, alleys and crescents, all connected by mystifying walkways. Six thousand people live in this landscape, more than a million visit its cultural centre each year. Getting lost in the Barbican is de rigueur. ‘You are here’ signage points to St Paul’s and Moorgate, the Museum of London, St Giles’s Church, the Postern, Lakeside, Shakespeare Tower, Wallside, the Sculpture Park, the Centre, Defoe House, the Guildhall, Cheapside and more. Invariably, someone is asking ‘Where am I?’ or ‘How do I get out of here?’ The warren of walkways snakes through the Barbican fortress. At the perimeter boundaries, month on 46

month, new high rise blocks encroach. They cannot enter. In 2001 the Barbican was accorded Grade II listed status. It was the largest built object ever listed. It was like giving such status to a town the size of Hebden Bridge. The Barbican’s architects, Chamberlin, Powell & Bonn worked to a noble concept. From a site of rubble caused by Luftwaffe bombs in August 1940, they designed this unique urban neighbourhood. They copied from Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille; from Georgian London’s garden squares and crescents and from Victorian domestic terraces. Their vision was to provide a community with all they could want of home and art and recreation. There is incongruity and deception in these concrete walkways. They are covered with a vast mosaic of small brick-sized brindled red tiles, stretching and circling and bordering waterfalls, ponds and raised gardens. These tiles are ludicrously dainty in such a vast space and took years to lay.

Chamberlin, Powell & Bonn never intended a brutal architecture. Their 1959 plan envisaged their terrace blocks covered with little white ‘riven’ marble tiles. They wanted the balconies surfaced with mosaic tiles, the concrete columns that hold up the buildings to be polished and coloured, the towers polished white. The Corporation of London rejected their proposal as too costly. Rough concrete

1. Standing on the high walkway overlooking the new landscape designed by Nigel Dunnett. 2. Bull hammered concrete contrasts with terracotta tiles.

was the suggested economy. The architects made a virtue of necessity and ‘pick hammered’ the concrete to give it texture and to make it live. Only the walkways kept the jewelled intention. Over time rainwater leaked through the tiles into the car parks and buildings below. In 2013 swathes of the highwalk were re-waterproofed and re-tiled. The landscape architect Nigel Dunnett replanted the gardens. Using hardy plants, he created successive waves of colour from spring to autumn, with seed heads, grasses, shapes and foliage for the winter months. And so, high above the city jams, there is a kaleidoscope of colour, a riot of form – tulips, cowslips, and blossom trees, verbena and forget-me-nots, mahonia and hellebores, aquilegia, anemones, asters and ferns. To wander the Barbican walkways is to immerse in a unique history of London’s postwar architecture. This clever urban landscape is not brutal. It is ambitious, elemental, frivolous, surprising. The setting sun reflects in the glass of the Barbican towers and rekindles light. In spring wrens and blackbirds nest on the terraces. I have seen a fox in the grasses. Goldfinches visit. Diana Souhami is the author of biographies, plays and short stories. Her latest book No Modernism Without Lesbians will be published on 2 April 2020 by Head of Zeus.

F E AT U R E By Vanessa Norwood

In praise of the new stone age Structural stone and pebbled mosaic demonstrate a sustainable approach to materials at a new Building Centre exhibition 1. The pathways that lead up to and around the building are particularly joyous. A publicly accessible garden paved in contrasting black and white pebbles marks the boundary between flat, city pavement and the textural landscaping of the scheme that can be felt pleasingly underfoot. The mosaics were created by a Sicilian father and son licensed to bring beach pebbles to London. © Amin Taha

hen the Building Centre came into being under the staircase at the Architectural Association in the 1920s as a materials bureau, one can imagine earnest young students examining samples of sculptural stonework as part of their education. Stone has a long history; the Normans’ military might be owed in great part to their discovery that stone, kept freshly wet from the quarry, was easier to carve before it calcified to form the castles that became emblematic of their rule. Stone seems the most poetic of materials; somehow honest and noble. Even the ground from which it is hewn has a romantic quality; the steep sides of stone that remain echoing the architecture to come. The expertise of the stonemason speaks of dedication and skill. The Building Centre officially launched in 1931 with the aim of demonstrating to students, architects and other built environment

practitioners, the best contemporary products and materials available, thus connecting the world of manufacturing with the study and practice of architecture and the built environment. The public programme at the Building Centre continues the tradition of bringing to the fore the materials and process of making architecture, by focusing on the use of specific materials through the lens of the best contemporary practices. Our upcoming exhibition The New Stone Age will be a celebration of structural stone; of its potential and beauty as well as its inherent sustainability. Curated by Amin Taha of Groupwork, Steve Webb of Webb Yates and Pierre Bidaud from the Stone Masonry Company the show will take the award winning Clerkenwell Close by Groupwork as the starting point for this survey of the contemporary use of structural stone. As well as being widely recognised as a new London landmark, Clerkenwell Close received notoriety for the wrong reasons when it was threatened with demolition, now happily resolved, when Islington Council wrongly believed that the scheme had not received the correct planning approvals. Clerkenwell Close is a love letter to structural stone with its limestone carved and fallen Ionic columns where the fossilised coral, ammonite shells, quartz pockets and seams of the material remains. The choice of stone ensures that the scheme has serious sustainability credentials; reducing the embodied carbon of the structure by 90 per cent compared to typical steel or

concrete frames. The attention to detail continues with the black and white pebble mosaic floor that begins at street level and is continued on the roof terrace. The exhibition at the Building Centre will provide an opportunity to broaden the discussion of stone, to acknowledge past architectural achievements and introduce a new generation of stone architects and landscape architects. The New Stone Age exhibition 27 February – 16 May 2020. Monday–Friday, 9am–6pm Saturday,10am–5pm Vanessa Norwood is Creative Director of the Building Centre.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L S H O W C A S E By Angus Bruce

street introduce colour, texture and pattern to define the primary meeting places. The abstracted geometries expand to generate the arrangement and form of the streetscape elements, increasing in intensity at the focal areas of the precinct. The vivid blue of turquoise and lapis lazuli are colours that resonate with the whole community. Their highly visual introduction, via blue glass aggregates and resin pavement stencils, adds vibrancy to the street and is a signature of the precinct.

1. Custom seating reinterprets the traditional Arabic ‘suffah’, or dais, for the urban Australian context. 2. Intricately detailed paving on both sides of the street introduces colour, texture and pattern to define the primary meeting places. © Andrew Lloyd and Hilton Stone

A captivating place for people to come together

The Afghan Bazaar Cultural Precinct

celebrates a unique concentration of Afghan businesses in Thomas Street, Dandenong Project name Afghan Bazaar Cultural Precinct Location Melbourne, Australia Landscape Architect Hassell The City of Greater Dandenong and the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship wanted to better define the area’s Afghan identity. Their ultimate goals were the creation of a place the local Afghan community could be proud of, and an engaging cultural destination for visitors and tourists to explore. The Hassell design for Thomas Street has created an emblematic urban streetscape for the cultural precinct that is integrated and responsive to the local Afghan community. It has delivered a distinct 48

visual character that engages and enlivens the street, encouraging community gathering.

Community collaboration supports social unity An intensive community consultation, facilitated by Sinatra Murphy, underpins the precinct design. This consultation highlighted the diversity within Dandenong’s Afghan population, but focused on shared ideas and aspirations identified to develop a design framework of community-endorsed themes. The Afghan Bazaar demonstrates a new direction in the design of public cultural spaces that aims to move beyond the clichés of precinct branding. The community consultation allowed the design team to understand the way people used the existing space, and how it could better accommodate specific cultural requirements. For example, the custom seating reinterprets the traditional Arabic ‘suffah’, or dais, for the urban Australian context, allowing people to socialise in familiar ways. The extraordinary tiling of Mazar-e-Sharif (Blue Mosque) was a major inspiration for the design. A contemporary interpretation shaped the design team’s approach, called ‘the geometry of gathering’. Intricately detailed paving on both sides of the

Making space for community gathering, the roadways were narrowed and footpaths widened to establish new infrastructure for festivals and events, such as Nowruz (New Year). Improved lighting, new trees, overhead power line removal and better links to the civic square on Lonsdale Street and Dandenong Railway Station also contribute to transforming the precinct into an attractive meeting place. An integrated artwork called ‘Lamp’ by Afghan-Australian artist, Aslam Akram, provides a captivating centrepiece by day and night. The base of the artwork represents human energy, knowledge and experience, as well as holy places, histories and memories of Afghan-Australian people. The top is a filigreed shade symbolising creation as a result of human energy, as well as friendship and respect between communities and within cultures in multicultural Australia. The strong topic of focus for designers today is ‘resilience’ and at times this is misunderstood to just be about ecology and the environment. Whilst this is the paramount issue confronting all of us globally, it is

The streetscape design has been a collaborative effort between traders, community leaders and precinct stakeholders and the end result is a vibrant precinct which celebrates the Afghan people. Jim Memeti, City of Greater Dandenong Mayor

I N T E R N AT I O N A L S H O W C A S E

3. Mesh flooring maximises available space and allows planting to be grown beneath. 4. The Demonstration Roof’s dynamic form and bold-red accents provide visual impact to help engage viewers and leave a lasting impression. © Peter Bennets and Les O’Rourke

so much more than this for us as designers for today and tomorrow. Concurrent with building climate resilience is the need to tackle social and economic resilience. With Afghan Bazaar, the engagement and ownership of the community represents how place and identity can help build community, public engagement and place ownership. It’s an example of many similar projects around the world where building social resilience is part of an essential design process that makes for a better place and which unifies communities through culture and histories. Strong social fabric, with economic self-sufficiency, will help our cities unify and tackle the bigger global issues of climate. Whilst there is the undeniable need to tackle climate as the core issue for the emergency before us, there needs to be the concurrent building of community and social survival for a healthy future.

The Burnley Living Roofs at the University of Melbourne, is Australia’s first green roof research, education and demonstration facility

Project name Burnley Living Roofs Location Melbourne, Australia Landscape Architect Hassell The University established the facility to: – Support the pioneering work of their Green Infrastructure Research Group, contributing to Australia’s national guidelines for green roof implementation – Provide a day-to-day teaching space for their urban horticulture students, and – Demonstrate and promote the possibilities for green roof technology to Australia’s designers, developers and public policy makers.

Designed by Hassell in close collaboration with the University, the facility comprises three separate roofs, retrofitted to the Burnley Campus administrative building. – The Research Roof is dedicated to quantifying environmental benefits and plant performance. It has four variable trial plots with a range of scientific monitoring equipment, facilitating horticulture, water quality and thermal insulation experiments. – The Biodiversity Roof uses indigenous plants, natural and recycled elements, and a small ephemeral stream to establish a discrete rooftop habitat that encourages colonisation. – The Demonstration Roof is the facility’s integral education and advocacy space, exhibiting 14 different green roof types. Its dynamic form and bold-red accents provide visual impact to help engage viewers and leave a lasting impression.

The innovative design evolved through the layering of multiple functional objectives: the foundation being its wedged profile, enabling diverse planting zones with different substrate depths and mixes and varying irrigation regimes. Layered over this, a circuitous timber walkway encounters each planting type and creates small teaching pockets. The mesh flooring maximises the available space allowing planting to be grown beneath. The roof was prefabricated and assembled offsite prior to installation, representing a development in design and construction methods. Increasingly, Australian cities are recognising the value of green roofs as a viable strategy for climate change adaptation and are encouraging widespread implementation to help meet established green targets. As a pioneering research, teaching and advocacy facility, the Burnley Living Roofs project is fundamentally about redefining the future form of our cities. It sets a benchmark for living architecture in Australia, that will create more sustainable, liveable and beautiful cities for our future. The research undertaken by the Burnley Living Roofs project has and is contributing to Australia’s living architecture guidelines: The Growing Green Guide. 49

We design. We make. We collaborate. A 100%FSC Manufacturer 50

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BRIEFING

1. Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park_O Circuit Track. 2. Tasmania’s World Heritage Cradle Mountain_Overland Track. 3. Feet up atop Cradle Mountain, Tasmania.

The Ground We Stand On Angus Bruce

treks on timber in the wilderness of Tasmania and Patagonia “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden, (1854). For those who willingly venture out and immerse themselves in nature, you will understand what it means to connect with the wilderness and truly escape. Hiking, trekking, roaming, tramping – no matter what you call it, the experience of losing oneself in the elements is the same. It is at times uplifting, enlightening and even spiritual. Muscles hurt, lungs seem fuller, eyes are wider and more attuned to the surrounds. You feel alive! The experience of connecting with nature – seeing, feeling, hearing and smelling the environment in its rawest state – is in part achieved through ‘the trail’. That, at times, signposted and colour-marked pathway that we trudge along from point A to B; be it for a day or for longer, the trail is what gives us access to the wilderness and opens the door for us all to experience nature. In the wilderness areas of Tasmania’s World Heritage Cradle Mountain in Australia, and similarly in Torres del Paine National Park in the Chilean part of Patagonia, trails have moments of delight that showcase the hands-on tactility of trail makers and caretakers. Yes, at times these pathways into the wild are just trails cut by those who have walked before us, but in many cases it’s the work of people who have been tasked with

protecting the flora, or getting us across fjords and who happily work with the natural materials adjacent to the trail itself. In both Tasmania and Patagonia this material is wood. Timbers of ten or more metres in length seamlessly floating over marshlands to protect the flora. Each lying end-to-end, with visible signs of matching knots and mirrored twists that tell the hiker that they’ve been split from the very same tree. Carved and scored logs that bridge watercourses and streams, providing hikers with essential grip. Short timber off-cuts placed side by side, almost to a level of detail that one would expect in a residential forest garden; they all bring the impact of the man-made trail just a little bit closer to nature. The colours and staining blend with the fallen timbers of the forest. Their tonality and textures align with nature’s

aesthetics, and the feeling underfoot fits with the surrounds. This touch on the landscape, while necessary, appears fittingly light and of its place. Yes, the material may weather and break down, but that is the natural process of the immediate surroundings. It’s only appropriate that the craftsmen and women who work along these wilderness trails, with limited tools and materials they find on‑site, choose to work with timber. And so they should, because as one checks the ground to ensure safe footing, as left follows right as we hike through nature, when we see and experience the use of timber we better appreciate the way humans have worked with nature to gain access to it. Angus Bruce is head of landscape architecture at Hassell. 51

F E AT U R E By Debbie Bartlett

Mitigating heat stress in public open spaces Landscape practitioners have an important role in increasing thermal comfort in public spaces, but how should it be measured? Readers of Landscape are invited to help develop aÂ new decision-making tool. 52

1. Illustrating the difference in temperature between open and shaded areas using a infrared thermal imaging camera. The PET heat stress measuring instrument can be seen. © Province East Flanders (partners in the Cool Towns project).

2. Benny Pyke, of Sioen Industries, setting up the Kestrel 5400 Weather Station. This records altitude (barometric), pressure, wind direction, crosswind, headwind, tailwind, density altitude, dew point temperature, globe temperature, heat stress index, naturally aspirated wet bulb temperature, relative humidity, absolute pressure, temperature, thermal work limit (TWL), wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), wet bulb temperature (psychrometric), wind chill and wind speed, enabling calculation of PET. © Sioen Industries NV

s landscape professionals we understand the role of green and blue infrastructure (GBI) as providing a myriad of benefits in our designs and increasingly acknowledge the multiple benefits these have, for example promoting health, exercise, general wellbeing and minimising stress, as well as promoting biodiversity. Planting trees to sequester CO2 as mitigation for climate change features in many policies and strategies and the idea of Nature Based Solutions (NbS) is gaining traction. SuDs are universally acknowledged as an effective strategy to mitigate extreme rainfall weather events – but how often is the role of GBI in mitigating local climate impact on people mentioned? Heat waves are becoming more frequent. The UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017 Evidence Report has predicted that heat-related deaths will increase by around 250% by the 2050s, based on the median estimate. The recent IPCC (2018) report, suggesting we have just 12 years to avert catastrophic temperature rise, has heightened awareness of the potential impact of temperature rise and the impacts for human wellbeing (IPCC, 2018). At the same time, concerns are being expressed about the economic impact with predictions that in a warm year in the far future (2081-2100), the heat stress related falls in productivity could mean loss of around €1.9 billion for London alone (Costa et al, 2016) In this context local authorities are taking this issue very seriously, evidenced by publications such as Rising to the Climate Crisis: A Guide for Local Authorities on Planning for Climate Change (TCPA, 2018) and mitigation measures are increasingly important in strategic plans. This is a key opportunity to promote GBI, adding another persuasive argument to our existing case. The Cool Towns Project https:// www.interreg2seas.eu/nl/cooltowns Funded by the European INTERREG 2 Seas programme the subtitle of this project is ‘Spatial Adaptation for Heat Resilience in Small

and Medium Sized Cities’. It involves partners from Belgium, France and the Netherlands with the University of Greenwich involved on the scientific advisory team. Rather than the familiar Urban Heat Island phenomenon, the focus here is on the microclimate of public open spaces. Small-scale interventions can be used to increase thermal comfort and so encourage use of the spaces – and nearby shops – during heatwaves. The aim is to produce a decision support tool including not only the effectiveness but also the costs and benefits of different GBI interventions to be considered, so that the most appropriate for the situation can be selected. There are many potential ways of increasing thermal comfort but – as landscape architects will be well aware – designs must also reflect the potential for all forms of extreme weather. What is a cooling breeze in summer can become an unattractive wind tunnel in winter; trees providing welcome shade shed leaves in autumn causing a management headache.

The theory is simple. We can simply stop sunlight reaching people by providing shade using either trees, planted structures such as pergolas, or textile canopies, all of which are most effective with strategically placed seating (I know – bird droppings …). Alternatively, sunlight can be reflected, using light-coloured hard landscape materials or by introducing reflective ‘cool pavements’. Air temperature can be reduced by evaporative cooling if water features, particularly moving ones, are included. The perfect solution – or compromise – will probably involved a combination of all these approaches. Green walls and façades are increasingly popular despite the capital and maintenance costs. Many claims are made about the benefits in terms of reducing pollution, improving air quality and reducing noise but, although the insulating effects on internal building temperature is well established, and they certainly improve the appearance of buildings, the impact on reducing outdoor 53

3. Two Kestrel 5400 Weather Stations, one directly in front of a 6m² southeast facing green wall and the other (the reference measurement) by the aluminum wall of the Sioen plant laboratory. © Sioen Industries NV t

References

temperatures is questionable. In fact, there is surprisingly little real evidence of the extent to which green infrastructure cools microclimates and even less for blue. The research tends to be location specific, based on recording air temperature and with the majority carried out in warmer climates than we experience; it is difficult to apply the results to different situations. The focus of this project is heat stress, as experienced by people in public open spaces. The way we experience heat is the result of not merely air temperature but a combination of radiation, humidity and wind speed. We feel the heat more on still days with high humidity, as our bodies cannot exploit evaporation as effectively as when there is a breeze. Heat stress is a relatively new concept for northern Europe. The partners in this project have come together to address the knowledge gap and are actively engaged in measuring the effectiveness of existing GBI, as well as identifying pilot sites for new installations in places where heat stress is an issue. Measuring impact is more complex than it might first appear – which may account for the lack of data – as specific instruments are needed to measure radiation, wind speed and humidity simultaneously to give the physiological equivalent temperature (PET), the standard for determining heat stress. There are also perceptual aspects, as people 54

experience temperature in different ways depending on their metabolism, background and gender; what is a comfortable temperature for one maybe be unpleasant for another. There are a plethora of contributory factors but, as a simple example, greenery and a view of water is generally perceived as cooler than a barren paved area. To try and take this into account, a questionnaire survey of passers by is being conducted by the project partners at the same time as the PET measurements of existing features in public open spaces to address the data deficient and provide useful information about which are most effective in reducing heat stress. But where then does decision making come in? All the partner organisation have been holding workshops with stakeholders, from elected members to grounds maintenance staff, with the combined purpose of raising awareness of heat stress and finding out what is important to them when they are redesigning or modifying public open spaces. And the result? You’ve guessed correctly – money! Not merely for purchase and installation, but also for ongoing management. Politicians at all levels want a good news story while at the other end of the spectrum it is about public safety, the cost of collecting fallen leaves and complaints about pigeons that dominate the agenda.

The intention of the ‘Cool Towns’ project is that the decision support tool will be evidence based, reviewing the scientific and grey literature as well as including the direct measurements undertaken by partners. It will include the full spectrum of both the benefits and disbenefits of as many types of intervention as possible. We need your help 1) We need more, different examples to measure and all the results – indeed the whole decision support tool – will be freely available. Assuming we don’t have really unseasonable winter heatwaves, it will be next summer before we are out measuring again, but please do get in touch if you have been involved recently with any urban public open spaces and have made interventions that could be affecting the local microclimate. 2) What would you like the decision support tool to include? Landscape Architects are key decision makers and your input would be very welcome. Please do get in touch Dr Debbie Bartlett MLI FCIEEM d.bartlett@greenwich.ac.uk Dr Debbie Bartlett is Principal Lecturer, Environmental Conservation, Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Environmental Sciences Faculty of Engineering and Science, University of Greenwich

Costa, H., Floater, G., Hooyberghs, H., Verbeke, S. and De Ridder, K. (2016). Climate change, heat stress and labour productivity: A cost methodology for city economies. Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy Working Paper No. 278. Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment Working Paper No. 248. Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy. Available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/ GranthamInstitute/ wp-content/ uploads/2016/07/ Working-Paper-248Costa-et-al.pdf. IPPC (2018). Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C approved by governments. Available at https://www. ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/ summaryforpolicymakers-ofipcc-special-reporton-globalwarmingof-1-5c-approved-bygovernments/. Kovats, R. and Osborn, D. (2016). UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017: Evidence Report. Chapter 5: People & the built environment. Adaptation SubCommittee of the Committee on Climate Change, London. Town and Country Planning Association (2018). Rising to the Climate Crisis – A Guide for Local Authorities on Planning for Climate Change. Town and Country Planning Association, London. Available at https:// www.tcpa.org.uk/ planningfor-climatechange.

LI Life Landscape Institute news and events

Adam White president of the Landscape Institute focuses on climate emergency at theÂ LI Awards ÂŠ Nick Harrison.

LI life: CEO Report By Dan Cook

Towards LI100 We now look ahead to an exciting 2020

ur theme for our 90th year was transformation over the past nine decades. During the year we promoted action on the climate and biodiversity emergency; health and wellbeing; ethics as well as the history of the organisation, across the UK and beyond to places like Oslo as partners at the IFLA World Congress. We welcomed the president of the Norwegian Landscape Association to speak at our Festival of Ideas in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. We also marked our birthday at Chelsea Flower Show at the HRH Duchess of Cambridge Back to Nature Garden designed in collaboration with Andrée Davies and LI president Adam White. We had a great range of activities organised locally including the festival in Bristol and an exhibition celebrating the work of Ian McHarg in Scotland. We have celebrated the greats of the profession including Brenda Colvin, Dame Sylvia Crowe, Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and Hal Moggridge. We were inspired by Sir David Attenborough with a call to action for the landscape profession at our awards ceremony 1 in November.

Addressing the biggest issue of our time, we are committed to deliver on our climate and biodiversity emergency declaration, with concerted action. We will equip members to deliver better solutions through CPD, training and knowledge. We will change policies, reduce our footprint and will do more digitally whenever possible. Governments in Scotland and Wales are already demonstrating strong government commitments to tackle the crisis. We look forward to stronger global commitments with COP26 to be hosted in Glasgow. Following on from the general election, we will be asking the new government to support the landscape sector and to help it to deliver the UK’s obligations on climate change and biodiversity. We’ll be pushing landscape’s contribution to addressing health inequalities and promoting regional growth – and we’ll be asking for more investment in place and skills to create the green economy of the future [see page 57]. Other new initiatives coming this year from the LI include: – LI being a partner in the High Streets Task Force. We will be recruiting experienced members from registered practices to act as specialist advisers to place managers around England in 2020. – A Landscape and Place convention in Birmingham on 2-3 with partners including the Institute for Place Management, the BID Foundation, the Design Council and West Midlands Combined Authority. – Working with employers and educators to see two new landscape apprenticeships schemes implemented in England. – We are increasing our digital initiatives with:

– LI campus online which will make CPD more accessible – Introducing online recording of CPD for LI members – Establishing a new online forum “LI Connect” for landscape practitioners.

A more inclusive profession Our strategy also commits us to be more inclusive as we move forward. It’s an issue close to my heart. We want every single practitioner to be able to be themselves in their workplaces and on site. Employers need to recruit, pay and progress fairly. Everyone needs to be treated with respect. We are committed to: – New entry standards which will make the profession more open to a wider range of professionals. – Actively encouraging diversity when we recruit and elect roles. Our election this year elected many diverse candidates as officers and council members. – Placing a greater focus on human skills such as unconscious bias, leadership development and presentation, communication and co-design. It’s also vital that we promote diverse role models. We have recently been working with BAME members of our profession including recent support to UEL during Black History Month featuring Professor Walter Hood . As we move towards our centenary, let’s all step up to the major challenges ahead with confidence in our ability to deliver the solutions and actions that our planet now needs. I want us to deliver that in an inclusive way that works always to the benefit of people, place and nature.

Dan Cook is CEO of the Landscape Institute.

LI life: Policy By Theo Plowman, LI Policy and Influencing Manager

Policy: Election I

n December, Boris Johnson returned to Downing Street with an increased majority. The government is now expected to push through a Brexit deal by the end of January. As of writing the LI is awaiting the Queen’s Speech on Thursday 19th December following the election. For up to date news and analysis check the LI website.

What was promised in the manifesto? The government hopes to push through Brexit legislation before 31 January. Talks for new trade deals and a future relationship with the EU could begin as soon as 1 February. At the time of writing it is not clear whether the government will push for

a Canada+, EEA, Norway+ or some other type of relationship. Beyond Brexit we can look to the Tory manifesto for clues as to how the government will proceed with policies relevant to our sector. The Conservative manifesto reaffirms the party’s goal of being carbon neutral by 2050 in a bid to tackle the ongoing climate crisis. The party pledged to set aside a £1 billion fund to develop clean energy, with a further investment of £500 million to help energy-intensive industries decarbonise. Support for areas of the green economy are somewhat vague; however, there will be increased funding for flood defences as part of a £4 billion package. Green infrastructure is mentioned in the summary as part

of an apparatus to deliver net-zero emissions by 2050 but is not covered in any more detail in the document itself. The Conservatives have also promised to publish a Social Housing White Paper, which will ‘set out further measures to empower tenants and support the continued supply of social homes’. There are restatements of existing commitments to the Affordable Homes Programme. Developments will continue to be focused on brownfield sites and there is a pledge to protect and enhance the Green Belt. Alongside this there is a drive to create infrastructure for new developments with the new £10 billion Single Housing Infrastructure Fund.

The Landscape Institute’s key asks of the new government The LI will be continuing its work to raise the voice of landscape in public debate, and to argue for people, place, and nature. There are issues pressing not just our sector but the country that will require urgent action, from climate to housing. Below are the key asks that both the LI and our members will be bringing to government in 2020.

Climate and biodiversity action

Landscape after Brexit

Design for people

Maximize green infrastructure

5 6

7 8 9

Champion high quality design Set and enforce higher place standards Engrain public health in the built environment

Cut net emissions across the whole country Start building places that are climate-change ready Commit to Environmental Net Gain (ENG)

Avoid a no-deal Brexit for landscape businesses Secure the skills we need Maintain and enhance EUlevel environmental protections

Invest in green infrastructure maintenance Mandate SuDS as the default option Ensure a joined‑up approach to land management

11 12

LI life: Policy

Policy: England – Glover Review of designated landscapes Seventy years after their creation, National Parks and AONBs continue to capture the public’s imagination. These landscapes provide valuable services to people, place and nature with 44 areas stretching across England. To ensure that they realise their full potential in the 21st century, a review led by writer Julian Glover was called last year. It published its findings this autumn after a year of visits and study. The review sets out 27 proposals to reform the role of national landscapes in delivering for people and the environment. It outlines an ambitious

agenda to improve the management, funding and delivery of designated landscapes across the country. The LI worked closely with DEFRA and the panel members and were pleased to see many of our recommendations reflected in the final report. Of particular merit was the highlighting of the often overlooked yet vital work done by AONBs. The drive to strengthen and invest in these areas will be important if our landscapes are to deliver for nature and the public. There is a recommendation that AONBs be given statutory consultee status and be encouraged to develop local plans. These measures are strengthened by recommended changes to the National Planning Policy Framework. There is recognition that governance reform is needed by appointing Boards that are smaller, more expert and more representative of wider society. The creation of

a National Landscape Service to defragment and improve efficiency in the landscape protection system is also explored. With this ambition to change there is also one to grow, with proposals for new designations for those landscapes which haven’t yet achieved AONB or National Park status, a new National Park in the Chilterns and a new “national forest” covering areas such as Sherwood Forest. The review comes at a vital time: designated landscapes can be part of the arsenal to combat climate change, tackle public health issues and prevent rural decline. However, with an imminent election there is a concern that this report may be lost in the turbulence of political change. The LI will be working to ensure that this does not happen and that whichever government’s desk this review lands on, it is not ignored.

w wwlandscapeinstituteorg/2018/04/ligreen-belt-briefingapr-2018.pdf

Policy: London – a vision for London’s green belt

Policy: Wales – Placemaking at the heart of Welsh planning

A new report from The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for London’s Green Belt was released this autumn. The report supports the setting up of an Advisory Council to conduct a comprehensive review of London’s Green Belt and create a 25year strategy for its future. There is hope that London’s Green Belt can deliver on improvements to landscape, biodiversity, water retention, and carbon sequestration. This would be achieved with new funding sources similar to National or Regional Parks. The Landscape Institute was represented on the panel and fed in throughout the process, our Green Belt policy briefing paper1 echoed many of the report’s findings. We will continue to work to protect and enhance Green Belts across the country.

Planning policy, and in particular the concept of placemaking, has continued to be integral to delivering the Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015), Wales’ framework for improving the current and future social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of the nation. Since the publication in 2018 of the new Planning Policy Wales (PPW10) there has been a drive to improve the contribution of planning and placemaking to delivering these outcomes. The Welsh Government has sought to work with the landscape sector on this. A recent event in Cardiff brought together many in the field to build consensus on the next steps for delivery. There was a useful discussion on the barriers and opportunities in the sector but importantly also concrete steps towards creating an action plan on how to utilise placemaking in any new developments.

This autumn the Welsh government also consulted on a draft of the National Development Framework (NDF). The NDF will set out a 20-year land use framework for Wales and will replace the current Wales Spatial Plan. The NDF covers big issues including the economy, housing and environment for Wales as a whole. It shows where nationally significant developments like energy, transport, water and waste projects should take place. Importantly it also addresses how Wales can help fight climate change and tries to make the best use of resources, create accessible healthy communities and protect the environment. The South Wales Landscape Leadership Group (SWLLP) submitted a response which supported the approach to sustainable development, which is appropriate for communities and the environment, and that is economically viable. We also highlighted the potential for a national forest and frameworks for enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem resilience.

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LI life: Landscape Institute Awards 2019

Can better management of our landscapes help us combat the climate and biodiversity emergency? Winners of this year’s LI Awards 2019 are leading the way 1. Paul Hogarth Company receiving the President’s Award 2019. 2. Sir David Attenborough after receiving the Landscape Institute Award from LI president Adam White.

s extreme weather – from flooding and intense storms to wildfires burning on several continents – becomes the new norm, the way we manage our landscapes is becoming even more important. Many of the winners of the 2019 Landscape Institute (LI) Awards have tackling the climate and biodiversity emergency at the heart of what they are doing. Announced on Thursday 28 November at The Troxy in London, the winning projects showcase a range of crucial interventions: better managing water resources, using natural methods to mitigate hurricane damage, reclaiming streets and green spaces, improving air quality, connecting our communities and restoring habitats. Alongside the winners, Sir David Attenborough also attended the ceremony, where he was awarded the Landscape Institute Medal, recognising his phenomenal contribution to educating and to connecting people, place and nature over multiple generations. Sir David was also awarded Honorary Fellowship of the LI. Adam White, President of the Landscape Institute said: ‘The Landscape Institute Awards celebrate the contribution the landscape profession makes to all our lives. The

standard continues to be raised with over 180 entries this year, and we are delighted to see the impact projects are having on people, communities and the wider landscape. ‘In June this year the LI declared a climate and biodiversity emergency and that is why I am particularly impressed to see the range of projects that are leading the way in developing innovative ideas and approaches at this crucial time for our planet. At a time when we are seeing more and more extreme weather, from flooding in Yorkshire and Derbyshire to wildfires burning on several continents, as individuals and as a profession we have the opportunity to make a real difference. ‘Following that declaration, we have put in place an expert panel to look at how we take forward the work we do as an organisation and the support and leadership we can give to our members. This is not a talking shop and after the panel reports in March

2020 we will be setting out a clear programme of action for the future. ‘On a personal note I am delighted that the Institute has honoured Sir David Attenborough with the LI Medal and also made him an Honorary Fellow of the Institute. As a leading light of his generation, who has for many decades been highlighting the importance of looking after our precious planet, this accolade recognises his phenomenal contribution to education and to connecting people, place and nature.’ Mathew Haslam, Managing Director of Hardscape, headline sponsor of the Awards said: ‘As a sponsor of the LI Awards since 2006, I am delighted to see the quality and breadth increase year on year. I am particularly pleased to see the impact that the profession is having in connecting communities, strengthening links to the landscape and finding innovative ways to tackle the increasing number of issues of our

LI life: Landscape Institute Awards 2019 time created through climate change. It is also pleasing to see so many new faces from the profession getting involved this year and flying the flag for what you do so well. Our support for you all encourages us “not to leave a stone unturned” and keep reaching for the optimum.’ Dan Cook, Landscape Institute CEO said: ‘As an organisation we are committed to reducing our carbon and ecological footprint, deliver against the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to supporting our members to do the same. This year we have taken steps to make our LI Awards more sustainable, including prioritising vegetarian meal options and committing to offsetting our event impacts through tree planting, by supporting a specific new project in Luton. ‘For 2020 we will include an even greater emphasis on climate and biodiversity, with specific new award categories and new criteria for all awards that show how this profession’s work directly benefits people, place and nature.’

Special accolade The President’s Award Winner: What’s Growing On The Greenway, The Paul Hogarth Company Limited With What’s Growing on the Greenway, the Paul Hogarth Company opened a dialogue with the community of East Belfast about their new landscape at the Connswater Community Greenway. Clear and comprehensive, reflective, interactive, open and caring, this work will leave a lasting legacy for the local community.

Professional categories Adding Value Through Landscape Winner: Walthamstow Wetlands, Kinnear Landscape Architects Limited The aim of this project was to open up to public access the 211-hectare Walthamstow

Reservoirs in the Lea Valley Green Belt. As lead consultant, the multidisciplinary team at Kinnear Landscape Architects worked over the course of five years to deliver a vibrant public space, while still protecting and enhancing the sensitive natural habitats. Shortlisted projects: – Connswater Community Greenway, The Paul Hogarth Company Limited – DISH (Dine In Southall), Southall Manor House, SEED_landscape design Ltd – Greener Grangetown, Arup Communications and Presentation Winner: What’s Growing On The Greenway, The Paul Hogarth Company Limited With What’s Growing on the Greenway, the Paul Hogarth Company opened a dialogue with the community of East Belfast about their new landscape at the Connswater Community Greenway. Clear and comprehensive, reflective, interactive, open and caring, this work will leave a lasting legacy for the local community. Shortlisted projects: – Staging Urban Landscapes: The Activation and Curation of Flexible Public Spaces, Cannon Ivers – The Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food, Tim Waterman and Joshua Zeunert Design for a Large-Scale Development Winner: Valencia Parque Central, Gustafson Porter + Bowman Inspired by a poem written by Valencian writer Ausiàs March, “Water full of wisdom”, Parque Central is a bold and ambitious regeneration project that distills Valencia’s heritage into an engaging, contemporary public space. Five multi-level gardens connect several previously divided neighbourhoods, catalysing growth and helping these areas to flourish. Shortlisted projects: – Houlton, Rugby – Key Phase 1, Bradley Murphy Design Limited (BMD)

– Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University South Campus, BDP Design for a Medium-Scale Development Special recognition: V&A Dundee public realm, Optimised Environments Limited (OPEN) The brief for the V&A Dundee public realm set the challenge of a minimalist, hard-landscape setting, to which this project responded superbly. OPEN’s landscape proposals provide a strong setting for a landmark piece of architecture, complimenting a transformative addition to the city of Dundee. Shortlisted projects: – The Bolshevik Factory, John McAslan + Partners – Kai Tak River Improvement Works (Wong Tai Sin Section), Hong Kong, Urbis Limited – Morecambe Promenade Sea Defence, Atkins Landscape and Urban Design – Queens Promenade, Atkins Landscape and Urban Design Design for a Small-Scale Development Winner: Marlborough Primary School, Macgregor Smith Landscape Architects As the project landscape architects for the challenging redevelopment of a Victorian school in Chelsea, Macgregor Smith took a rigorous, highly collaborative approach to deliver a vibrant learning environment. The scheme maximises access to outdoor space across multiple levels, and sets the example to which all high density environments designs should aspire. Shortlisted projects: – The Field, Hardman Square, Manchester, Layer (Landscape Architecture) Ltd – London Wall Place, Spacehub Design Ltd

5 3. LI president Adam White welcomes guests. 4. Professor Rainer Stange, president of the Norwegian Landscape Association which is also celebrating its 90th birthday in 2019. 5. Marian Spain CEO of Natural England addresses the audience. 6. Arit Andersen from BBC Gardeners’ World hosted the awards.

Design for a Temporary Landscape Project Winner: Fitzpark, Arup A six-month installation in Fitzrovia, London, Fitzpark used space for work, play, events and education to transform ideas of what a busy Central London street can be. The project had a clear transformative effect on the setting and the people using it, and Arup’s rigorous analysis both during and after the parklets’ use paves the way for similar projects to succeed in the future. Shortlisted project: – The Walnut Grove: A Temporary Landscape of Legacy, Carl Smith Design Enhancing Heritage and Culture Special recognition: Folkestone Harbour Link, Macfarlane + Associates Ltd The Harbour Link project aimed to sensitively regenerate three of Folkestone’s historical harbour assets into high-quality public spaces. The scheme reinvigorated a neglected part of town and revived its distinctive character. Judges were impressed with the historical research undertaken and the strong evidence presented for ongoing community benefit. Shortlisted projects: – Accrington Town Square and Interpretive Artwork, IBI Group UK Ltd – Great Linford Manor Park – Conservation Management Plan, Andrew Hiorns Ltd. – The Restoration of Beddington Park, LUC Excellence through Planting and Horticulture Winner: The Water Gardens, HTA Design LLP The retro truly meets the contemporary in this Heritage Lottery-funded restoration of a 1960s public park in Hertfordshire. HTA’s planting scheme formed a major

part of a Garden that exudes the pop culture and exuberance of the era, while behind the scenes employing an innovative social media approach to evidence ongoing community value. Shortlisted projects: – Sky UK Campus, Alexandra Steed Urban – Winton Memorial Garden, Project Centre Limited (PCL) Landscape Planning and Assessment Winner: Shropshire Landscape and Visual Sensitivity Assessment, Gillespies LLP The judges panel called all four submissions exemplary. But the rigour, accessibility and ease of use of Gillespies’s report distinguished it as this year’s winner. Shortlisted projects: – Colne and Crane Green Infrastructure Strategy, Arup – Charnwood Forest Landscape Character Assessment, FPCR Environment and Design Ltd – Greater Manchester Landscape Character and Sensitivity Assessment, LUC Local Landscape Planning Winner: Masterplan for Sustaining Caerphilly’s Landscape, WYG This clear, easy-toread landscape masterplan recognises modern legislation for managing and sustaining Wales’s natural resources. Engaging with a communities’ shareholders throughout the process, WYG produced excellent mapping and context analysis that draws the reader into and through the process. Shortlisted projects: – A Vision for Corporation Street, HTA Design LLP – Culture Mile – Look and Feel Strategy, Arup

Transforming through Management and Science Joint winners: The judges were so impressed with these entries that they decided to grant the Award to both. They are: Charting a Natural Course: An Ecosystem Services Opportunities Map and Natural Capital Account for the River Irwell, The Environment Partnership (TEP) Ltd Charting a Natural Course, an ecosystem services opportunity assessment for a heavily modified river catchment in Greater Manchester, is an innovative piece of work of great significance. Addressing many contemporary issues around natural capital accounting, this is a tool worthy of championing at the national level. Richmond Park Management Plan, The Royal Parks Equally of national significance is the Royal Parks’s entry – a exemplary Management Plan for Richmond Park that combines a values-driven approach with technical analysis of site condition to convey complex information in a meaningful, accessible, and engaging way. Urban Design and Masterplanning Winner: High Path Estate Regeneration, PRP This masterplan thoughtfully reconnects a chaotic site on the edge of the Wandle River eco-corridor with the surrounding townscape, creating a sustainable and inclusive community space. PRP’s comprehensive approach to collaboration, including over 30 community engagement programmes and a mentorship programme for young people, is one of many reasons for this scheme’s resounding success. Shortlisted projects: – Western Harbour Masterplan, rankinfraser landscape architecture – Winstanley and York Road Estate Regeneration, Farrer Huxley Limited

LI life: Landscape Institute Awards 2019 Special awards Client of the Year Winner: Derek Dunsire, Glasgow City Council Nominated by Urban Movement Limited Shortlisted projects: – Pocket Living, Nominated by B|D landscape architects – Urban&Civic, Nominated by Bradley Murphy Design (BMD)

Open categories Dame Sylvia Crowe Award for Outstanding International Contri bution to People, Place and Nature Winner: Landscape Belt of Xianglu Bay Beach in Zhuhai, LAY-OUT Planning Consultants Co., Ltd A landscape masterplan that provides an outstanding example of how to protect coastal regions from storms, while at the same time creating a beautiful linear coastal park and improving biodiversity.

Shortlisted projects: – Stitch the City and River: Yunyang Waterfront Green Corridor, Beijing Forestry University – Valencia Parque Central, Gustafson Porter + Bowman – Wuxiang Nature School, YoungAsianScape Design Co., Ltd. Landscape Legacy Award A new category for a person, organisation or group leaving a lasting legacy to the world through landscape. Winner: Zheng Jie’s Landscape Architecture Group, Hangzhou, China Judges praised Zheng Jie’s highly commendable body of work: a combination of traditional Chinese practice and contemporary interpretation that evidences broad expertise with a lightness of touch, a sensitive approach, and a balanced consideration of human experience and ecological sustainability. Shortlisted projects: – Isle of Wight AONB Partnership

Landscape Innovation Award A new category recognising ideas and practice that will play a significant role in transforming the way the profession operates. Winner: Pioneering Digital Innovation, Arup A revolutionary approach to digitising every stage of a landscape project, judges praised this entry’s innovative ethos and the range of immersive, interactive technology applied. The approach works at all scales – from large-scale infrastructure projects to planting design. Shortlisted projects: – LPES as a Guide to Evidence-based Green Infrastructure Planning: a Case Study of Qinglong Lake Forest Restoration Planning, Beijing Forestry University – Monitoring Design: Stormwater Management Process Visualization and Evaluation, Tsinghua University – Tree Selection for Green Infrastructure, Trees and Design Action Group (TDAG) – Collect & Connect – Resilient South City, HASSELL

A tree for every decade of Landscape The LI in conjunction with Luton Parks Service and Air Quality Arboretum are planting a tree for every decade of Landscape. Kindly sponsored by Marshalls and in celebration of the LI’s 90th birthday, this project will create an arboretum in Wardown Park, Luton with an Air Quality theme to inform and educate local people and park visitors about the value of trees – particularly in relation to health, air quality, wildlife and biodiversity. The project aims specifically to connect children with nature whilst providing an educational resource in relation to climate change and the causes of pollution. The Arboretum will include trees which most effectively combat air pollution and support biodiversity. The Arboretum in Wardown Park will bring back into use the now redundant mini-golf site. It will include

a Tree Trail with interpretation boards about the top ten most effective tree species in Luton for carbon capture and the removal of air pollutants, and the wildlife which depends on trees. Initial plans to develop the Arboretum as a means to connecting children with nature and as an educational resource have already started via links with River Bank Primary School, which lies 200m from Wardown Park. It is envisaged that pupils will take part in the development of the Arboretum as an educational resource. The Primary School draws from a catchment which has significant BAME communities, within which there are 17.8% households where no people have English as their main

language, 18.6% residents over 16 have no qualifications and 30.8% women are economically inactive. It is envisaged that this exciting scheme will capture approximately 22kg carbon/year, so a total of 1.1 tonnes over 50 years. The Arboretum will capture 1.1x21 = 23.1 tonnes of carbon by 2069.

LI life: Just Landscape conference 1. “Double Sights is an art installation about Woodrow Wilson’s complicated legacy designed by acclaimed artist Walter Hood. At the sculpture’s centre, the two vertical planes face each other; one is reflective stainless steel with quotations by Wilson’s contemporaneous critics and the other is a glass lenticular surface with images of the critics. The piece is intended to contribute to an ongoing conversation, not only about Wilson, but also about how we as a community grapple with history and how we move forward on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

By Bridget Snaith and Carole Wright

Just Landscape? Diversity, Ethnicity and Representation Conference 1

During Black History Month in October 2019, Dr Bridget Snaith from the Department of Landscape at the University of East London chaired an international conference on landscape, diversity, ethnicity and representation. Bridget outlines the objectives of the conference and Carole Wright, a delegate, looks at some of the highlights.

espite high hopes for open spaces as “the foundation for public interaction and social integration” (Urban Task Force, 2005)1 urban parks, squares, country parks and rural landscapes are not unproblematically and equally open to all. In the UK, there is significantly less good quality greenspace in neighbourhoods with a high proportion of residents from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds (CABE 2010.2 Even in parks and

other nature spaces accessible to diverse communities, people from non-white backgrounds are frequently under represented as users (Natural England 2016). Similar findings in the United States have prompted researchers there to question whether predominantly white landscape professions are creating ethnoracially inscribed landscapes, and thus influencing who feels welcome (Byrne & Wolch, 2009).3 The conference asked: ‘Who and what is represented in the landscape?

Does power to shape the landscape promote preferred narratives and practices, limiting cultural access? Why are the professions that produce our urban and rural landscapes not more ethnically diverse?” The event brought together leading international practitioners and researchers from the arts, from landscape architecture, and other academic disciplines, to explore issues of diversity, ethnicity and representation, to ask, is this just landscape?’

LI life: Just Landscape conference As a black urban-based community garden manager and Landscape Institute Ambassador, I was keen to attend this event in Black History Month to gain a greater understanding of the barriers and find inspiration to encourage the under represented communities with whom I work, to “Choose Landscape” as a career. In this article I focus on three speakers whose practices I related to, with no disrespect to the other outstanding presenters. Walter Hood (USA) was a keynote speaker whose work I was not previously known to me. This may highlight the work the Landscape Institute needs to do to promote the work of more diverse practitioners inside and outside of the profession and certainly encourage representation of ethnic minorities to increase the very low percentage uptake by marginalised groups. Hood is a professor and creative director/founder of awardwinning Hood Design Studio in Berkeley, California. He works across architecture, landscape architecture, art, community and urban design and his work is very much informed by his cultural heritage, African American. Amongst Hood’s high-profile projects, the two which stood out for me were International African American Museum (IAAM) in Charleston, South Carolina and ‘Double Sights’ at Princeton University, a black and white vertical sculpture of two columns leaning on each other, to the memory of former principle Woodrow Wilson. The work came out of protests by BAME students, who wanted to assert their place in the racially

charged landscape of the campus and the lack of representation of their histories in the curriculum. The piece was commissioned by the trustees in a move to diversify the campus. Hood said of the platform his practice gives him: “These projects come out of me being Black” My next inspirational talk was about the work of black British artist and photographer (and researcher) Ingrid Pollard. Amongst the work shown was her classic 1980s ‘Pastoral Interludes’ which looks at notions of “Britishness” and racial difference in rural landscapes. This series has such resonance with me, sharing her Caribbean background, and whose parents also shared memories of accessing the countryside in their homelands but, once they had immigrated as British citizens, felt unable to access the British countryside and deterred their children from doing so too. Pollard was one of the founding members of Autograph ABP (previously known as Association of Black Photographers) and the examination of landscape and the place of “other” through photography has been at the core of her work for over 40 years. Pollard’s work is strongly rooted in a sense of place and questions why images of Black people always place them in an urban context. Her images from the ‘Pastoral Interlude’ series was a deeply personal examination of representation, challenging whose heritage is evoked when looking at images of the rural or national landscape.

Matthew Ayamba, UK based like Pollard, originally from Ghana where he regularly walked in rural settings, founded the ‘Black Men’s ’ Walking Group’ to get men out the urban cityscapes of Sheffield into the rolling landscapes of the Peak District. A play based on this group began touring the UK in 2019. Ayamba, presenting with Maxine Graves, academic and researcher at Sheffield Hallam University set up the walking group to facilitate access for black men to nature for physical and mental wellbeing, with the aim of recruiting 100 members. The group has now developed to include women and has successfully created a Muslim women’s group. This conference highlighted pioneering practitioners in diversifying landscape and the steps taken in representation. Their work needs to be included in school and college curriculums nationwide, to enable students from diverse backgrounds to see what is possible.

2. Commentary on the ‘Double Sights’ project page, Princeton University website as at 1 December 2019. 3. Professor Walter Hood addressing the conference. 4. Ingrid Pollard PhD. 5. Matthew Ayamba with the Black Men’s Walking Group.

rban Task Force, 2005. U Towards a Strong Urban Renaissance. [Online] Available at:http:// image.guardian.co.uk/ sys-files/Society/ documents/2005/11/22/ UTF_final_report.pdf [Accessed 17/12/2019].

ABE, 2010. Urban C Green Nation, London: CABE.[Online] available at https://www. designcouncil.org.uk/ sites/default/files/asset/ document/urban-greennation-summary1_0.pdf [Accessed 17/12/2019].

yrne, J. & Wolch, J., B 2009. Nature, Race, and Parks: Past Research and Future Directions for Geographic Research. Progress in Human Geography, Vol.33(6), pp. 743-765.

Dr Bridget Snaith is senior lecturer in landscape architecture at the University of East London.

Carole Wright is a project manager with particular interest in community gardens, beekeeping and leading walks.

LI life: By Rachel Tennant Chair, Landscape Institute Scotland

Scotland celebrates the legacy of McHarg L andscape Institute Scotland celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Ian McHarg with a 10-day long exhibition and a launch event at the Sculpture Court, Edinburgh College of Art. Ian McHarg’s seminal text Design with Nature has had a huge impact on the profession of landscape architecture, shifting its focus from an aesthetic basis towards a large-scale ecological approach. The text also had a great influence on planning and ecology and led to the development of landscape urbanism, an approach that underpins many contemporary design practices. Over 170 people attended the launch event with speakers including Professor Sandy Liddell Halliday – Principal, Gaia Research who spoke on the theme of McHarg and Urban Ecology; Professor Brian Evans, Professor of Urbanism and Landscape at the Mackintosh School of Architecture and director of the Glasgow Urban Laboratory who spoke about the new book Designing with Nature Now which has just been published (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2019). Alumni spoke about the way in which McHarg’s legacy (through his pupil David Skinner) influenced their current practice. Speakers included Cathy Johnston, Group Manager, Glasgow City Council; Johanna Gibbons, Founding Partner J&L Gibbons; and Andrew Grant, Founding Director of Grant Associates. Ian McHarg was himself represented through the film screening of Multiply and Subdue. Through the celebration and exhibition, LIS hope to raise awareness of McHarg, his worldwide positive influence and his place within the wider narrative of the Scottish

environmental tradition. It also examined how subsequent students went on to continue to design with nature through current practice and inspire the profession into the twentyfirst century. The exhibition material was collated into a richly illustrated display divided across three themes: Environmentalism and McHarg’s early teaching in Scotland; McHarg’s Scottish Students and students of David Skinner. At a one-day design charette on Saturday 19th October a number of graduate and professional landscape architects worked with a group of enthusiastic young people interested in design, ecology and sciences on a design proposal for the Central Scotland Greenspace Trust (CSGNT) at Little France Park, Edinburgh. The day included an introduction of the world of landscape architecture,

a presentation by the acting CEO of Central Scotland Green Network (CSGNT) on their aspirations for Little France Park and a visit to the site at Craigmiller, Edinburgh. An intense two hour design process including an analysis of the site, opportunities and constraints and resulted in two sketch masterplans following the principles of Design with Nature. Alumni reflection speakers and sponsors of the event judged the outputs of the ecological design charette and awarded prizes at the event launch. The LIS would like to thanks all their generous sponsors: SNH, the Landscape Institute as part of the 90th birthday, Central Scotland Green Network, ESALA Edinburgh University, Binnie Murray and Hutton and the RIAS. Video recordings are available of all the presentations: https://bit.ly/2PbyiBh

LI life:

Introducing a Set of Global Principles

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THERE ARE 7 PROPOSED PRINCIPLES: In 2019 the LI proposed that a set of global ethical principles for the profession be produced to promote ethical practice across the global landscape practitioner community. The global principles combine the intentions and spirit of the current extant national codes of practice, statements of principle, good practice from other professions and international ethics (IESC) standards1. The aim of the principles is to ensure and promote global ethical practice, both in order to ensure public confidence in the landscape profession and to promote environmental wellbeing. There are 7 proposed principles which will be the subject of a full member consultation in early 2020. The draft principles have already been presented to the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) at its World Congress in September 2019 and the LI Council and Board in November 2019.

1 https://ricstest.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/ international-ethics-standards-final.pdf

Landscape practitioners promote enhancement of the environment and quality of life for people, place and nature for now and future generations. This means considering the impact on the environment, people, place and nature of the work to be undertaken before work takes place. In some cases this will take the form of a full, formal, environmental impact assessment. In others the assessment will be less formal and practitioners will be expected to use their professional judgement. Such assessment would include considering the impacts on the environment as a whole (both positive and negative). Activity that could mitigate or remove detrimental impact should be considered where negative impact is identified. People, place and nature includes the cultural and social heritage of place as well as the environmental setting.

Landscape practitioners are respectful of each other and do not in their practice, unlawfully discriminate against others.

Each practitioner should know and understand the legal requirements in this area, relevant to their place of practice. Practitioners are strongly encouraged to deliver services in a way that respects the diversity of the communities they serve in a way that exceeds the obligations of the law, where this is possible. The principle encourages practitioners to be respectful of the cultural and social heritage and community cultures present in the places where their services are being delivered. It also encourages practitioners to actively seek out a diversity of viewpoints in any engagement or consultation relating to their work. This is likely to include ensuring a cross section of the affected community is consulted and that representatives of relevant communities are engaged where relevant.

Landscape practitioners associations comply with all relevant national and international law. It is the responsibility of each individual practitioner to ensure they are aware of the law relevant to their role and particular projects. Practitioners should be aware that the law is not the same in different jurisdictions and it is therefore important that individuals are aware of any relevant differences and are acting lawfully. The principle encourages practitioners to deliver services in a way which goes beyond strict legal requirements in order to deliver a positive impact on the environment. Practitioners are required to think at all times about the importance of professionalism and service quality. They are encouraged to think about how to ensure they protect their reputation and that of the profession and to seek expert advice where appropriate.

for Landscape Practice

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Landscape practitioners are committed to their continuing practitioner development and take steps to ensure they only provide services they are competent to deliver.

Landscape practitioners deliver good quality landscape services including giving consumers the ability to raise issues about service provision where appropriate.

CPD is an important aspect of the career of any practitioner. It helps to ensure practitioner knowledge is kept up to date. The requirements on landscape practitioners in relation to CPD varies depending on the national association of the relevant country. For example in the UK, LI corporate members are required to undertake 25 hours of CPD each year. At least 5 of those hours must relate to “climate, sustainability and resilience”. This principle is aimed at ensuring that landscape practitioners do not undertake work or provide advice where they are not fully competent to do so.

Practitioners should ensure that there are mechanisms in place which can be used by those using landscape services to provide feedback or make complaints about the quality of service received. This is so that clients can feel they are properly served and that when things go wrong, issues can be addressed and service improved. Such mechanisms may include a complaints policy and process. Those wishing to make a complaint about the services of a landscape practitioner should be confident that this will be dealt with quickly and effectively.

Landscape practitioners are committed to upholding the integrity of the landscape profession and are honest and transparent in their relationship with their practitioner body, member/national association or any licensing/regulatory authority.

This principle is aimed at ensuring that practitioners understand their behaviour is key to the integrity of the profession. Practitioners should exhibit the principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership in their day to day practice. They should actively promote and robustly support them and challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.

Landscape practitioners recognise the issue of climate and biodiversity emergency and take all reasonable steps to employ sustainable development practices. This principle aims to ensure that landscape practitioners recognise the issues raised by the global climate and biodiversity crises and how these impact on their work. It is important to understand that working in the public interest means working to reduce negative impacts on the environment. “Reasonable steps” may include the undertaking of an assessment in order to understand the impact on “place” of a particular project or task before that work is undertaken. Where potential negative impacts are identified, landscape practitioners should ensure work is planned and carried out in such a way as to remove or reduce that impact.

LI life: CPD training and events EVENTS AND TRAINING Join us at the LI Conference 2020 – Birmingham, UK – 30 June to 1 July 2020 Building on the success of our 2018 Valuing Landscape conference, the LI Conference 2020 will debate key themes around ‘Landscape at Scale’. Join delegates and high profile speakers from around the world, network with experts and engage in panel discussions during this exciting two day event. www.landscapeinstitute.org/events

Keep your skills sharp with #LICPD The LI’s programme of CPD events across the UK is designed to give landscape practitioners the professional skills they need in a rapidly changing world.

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The Ground We Stand On: Angus Bruce

The Ground We Stand On: Diana Souhami

The Ground We Stand On: Amanda Merrell

The Ground We Stand On: Saruhan Mosler

The Ground We Stand On: Jun Huang

The Ground We Stand On: Jaideep Warya

Mitigating heat stress in public open spaces

Beneath the city

Life on the verge

Grounds for education

Scratching the surface – soil remediation in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

No fines please

Beirut, the ground beneath our feet

Robbing the soil

Led by the Land