A Festival of Ideas: LI90 Celebrations

Chelsea

The Landscape Institute returned to RHS Chelsea to kick off its anniversary celebrations.

Andree Davies and Adam White explain the design of the Back to Nature Garden at Chelsea.

© Nick Harrison

The Landscape Institute (LI) formed in 1929 at what is now the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. For nine decades, the organisation has supported its members through often seismic environmental, social and economic changes, to which it has also had to adapt. Fittingly, LI returned to RHS Chelsea on Friday 24 May to mark this important milestone. Landscape leaders past and present joined with partners and collaborators from across the built and natural environment. The LI also welcomed senior members from the Norwegian Landscape Association, who share the LI’s landmark 90th anniversary.

Arit Anderson, BBC Gardeners’ World presenter talked about the way in which Chelsea had become ‘greener’ this year.

© Nick Harrison

The event took place on Main Avenue in the RHS Back to Nature Garden. Co-designed by HRH The Duchess of Cambridge with landscape architects Andrèe Davies and Adam White PLI. The garden aims to connect communities with nature and promote the health benefits of spending time outdoors.

‘During its lifetime the LI has seen many changes in the world,’ Adam said. ‘Each decade has seen great social change, from the aftermath of the First World War, the creation of the first council housing and the growth of the suburbs to the creation of the welfare state, new towns, the impact of major planning legislation and the growing awareness of climate change.

Adam White FLI and Hal Moggridge cut the #LI90 birthday cake!

© Nick Harrison

‘That’s why it’s important we look back at the previous nine decades. Many of these changes have affected not only how we live our lives, how we work, where we go to school and how we stay healthy, but also on the way we design, plan and manage our landscapes.

‘But while it’s important for us to look back and celebrate the great strides we have made; we need to remember that we live in challenging times. We’re facing rapid change to our natural environment, increased urbanisation and the mounting pressures of living in the heart of a modern city. That’s why LI90 will also be about looking to the future, and examining how in particular our profession can help meet the needs of our changing world.’

Bristol

Bristol and the South West branch have been celebrating the LI’s 90th birthday in style.

Festival of Nature.

© Chris Wilkins Photography

–– A talk from Andrew Grant of Grant Associates on ‘Gardens by the Bay’ at the Arnolfini for professionals and the public; to raise awareness and value of the profession and the Institute to a wider audience and press.

–– A series of Continuing Professional Develop (CPD) workshops for landscape professionals focused on community engagement and co-design, led by professionals from diverse backgrounds and exploring: designing for diverse communities; co-design of streets and digital engagement tools, with the aim of upskilling landscape professionals, developing skills and confidence and increase business and career opportunities within the profession.

Andrew Grant speaks about Gardens by the Bay at the Arnolfini.

© Chris Wilkins Photography

–– An education/careers workshops and ‘livebuild’ project for young people from BAME backgrounds as part of the ‘Shape my City’ programme to create an installation at the Festival of Nature; inspire people to join and increase the BAME diversity of the landscape profession; work with people and professions from different backgrounds and actively collaborate and build a temporary installation.

The first of the CPD workshops was called: People at the heart of placemaking at which urban designer Noha Nasser shared her experiences of immersive engagement practices in diverse communities.

Attendees were asked to brainstorm perceived barriers in community engagement and codevelop an effective ‘elevator pitch’, highlighting the value and impact of community engagement to potential clients and developers.

Green Horizons: next generation livebuild

Shape My City young people on site at the Festival of Nature.

© Chris Wilkins Photography

Bringing together diverse young people from the Architecture Centre’s Shape My City project, university students from UWE and the University of Gloucestershire, architects, landscape architects and young engineers, the 2019 livebuild project included:

–– A series of careers workshops promoting the LI’s #chooselandscape campaign

–– A live design and build project to create a temporary structure and public engagement activities for the 2019 Festival of Nature (7-9 June) on the Bristol Harbourside. The installation included a bamboo constructed ‘burrow’ and natural structure made from cuttings to form a ‘nest’ while ‘hive’ activities included drawings, writing and thoughts about people, nature and place.

Landscape Institute South West are grateful to the Architecture Centre, Buro Happold and the University of the West of England, all of whom made a massive contribution to these events.

Festival of Ideas, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

By Tahlia McKinnon

Adam White welcomes guests to the Last Drop Pavilion at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

© Paul Upward

Part of the London Festival of Architecture, the Landscape Institute held a two-day Festival of Ideas with a focus on overcoming boundaries and landscape transformation

We live in complicated times. As we face rapid change to the natural environment and increased urbanisation, now more than ever, landscape professionals will play a crucial part in meeting these challenges head on.

In its 90th year, the LI is determined to reflect on the theme of transformation and examine the changing world of landscape. What have we gained over the last 90 years? What have we lost? And most importantly, how should the profession prepare for the future?

Themed around ‘overcoming boundaries’, the LI Festival of Ideas set out to provide a stimulus for these conversations – centred on the profession, professional life, and the landscape itself.

With a series of workshops, walking tours and expert-led talks, we aimed to bring to life the stories of the practitioners and projects that work to transform and connect people, place and nature.

Setting the scene

Clare Risbeth addresses guests in the Park.

© Paul Upward

A multitude of tests face the professionals of today. From cultural and political barriers, to social and emotional challenges and the tangible and physical boundaries, how do we continue to make nature work for people and places?

Our celebrations began on the Friday evening at an LI Member reception, where President Adam White opened proceedings, presenting a timeline of the Institute’s key achievements over the past ninety years (pages 24-25).

Ruth Holmes, Design Principal for Landscape and Public Realm for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and LLDC Developments, followed with a warm welcome to a part of London which started life as desolate site dominated by a fridge mountain, became a venue for the London Olympics; then a Park for the East London communities of Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest; and is now expanding to also become the home to the new London Arts, Culture and Innovation quarter – the East Bank.

Andrew Harland sets the scene for the next generation of Olympic Park developments.

© Paul Upward

Leading on the project, Maria Adebowale-Schwarte, Executive Director of the Foundation for the Future of London, reflected on the challenges and goals facing urban placemaking as the Foundation prepares to implement these plans.

‘The mission of the Foundation is to connect the communities and our partners with the scale and resources needed to ensure the East Bank is London’s must-visit destination,’ she explained. ‘While developing skills, generating jobs and strengthening relationships to produce a resilient, thriving, world-class neighbourhood.’

Rainer Stange, President of the Norwegian Landscape Association invited delegates to attend the IFLA World Congress taking place in September.

Kickstarting the Saturday morning and preparing delegates for their guided walks across the Park, Neil Davidson (J&L Gibbons) and Clare Rishbeth (University of Sheffield) presented key ideas and themes that would later be addressed in more detail at the afternoon landscape forum.

The audience met at the UCL Bartlett Auditorium in the Here East building in the Olympic Park.

© Paul Upward

First, a focus on health and wellbeing. Landscape professionals have dedicated much of their work to promoting the benefits of nature, but where are the opportunities for further research? How can we create informed schemes without insight of how users respond to them? Health statistics may speak for themselves, but how can we track how users really feel about their surroundings?

Neil introduced Urban Mind; a research project that uses an app to tracks a person’s mood as they move through an outside space – an example of how new technology can monitor our engagement with nature to deliver data that can point to (and inform) a need for greener infrastructure.

But monitoring this response isn’t so straightforward, given the diversity of cultural positioning on nature.

With ‘The Bench Project’, Clare has researched extensively how experience of place is shaped by personal and community histories of migration, while the social potential of the public realm is in its propensity to support positive intercultural encounters. To continue to create relevant and engaging spaces in modern society, then, we must place significant emphasis on inclusivity.

In summary, landscapes must live to ‘serve’ our diverse communities – so is it a case of ethics versus aesthetics?

Campaigning for change

Landscape is more than a job after all; for most LI members, the decision to train as a landscape practitioner was closely linked to concern about the environment; to a desire to take principled actions about designing and managing the landscape, and from a simple commitment to doing the right thing.

The infamous hole, the replacement of which was discussed by Anna Jorgensen green infrastructure initiatives led by Sheffield University and Sheffield Council.

© Paul Upward

It seems fitting, then, that in a day enveloped in talk of challenging boundaries, the first panel of the landscape forum brought expert speakers together to discuss climate change and climate emergency.

Phil Askew, Thamesmead Director of Landscape and Placemaking at Peabody, moderated this session and set the tone. As former project sponsor of the 2012 Olympic Park, Phil led on the landscape and public realm transformation into legacy mode, and when comparing plans with Thamesmead only two years later, he wondered if the profession had actually managed to ‘change much’ regarding green infrastructure, as the projects faced ‘many of the same challenges’.

‘There is no landscape architecture on a dead planet,’ Anna French surmised, illustrating her presentation with a poignant film made by her daughter, Olivia French. Founder of the Landscape Futures movement, Anna implied there is much more landscape professionals can be doing to sustain our ecosystems; from rewilding cities to supporting soil health and reinforcing solar panels.

There is undoubtedly a large role for landscape professionals to play in combatting the climate crisis. But equally, much of this call to action rests on inspiring the general public to respond. How can we encourage communities to care about their wider environment if they are not reflected in the landscape itself?

Phil Askew with Andres Harland, Anna French, Bridget Snaith and Anna Jorgensen.

© Paul Upward

‘Is a love of the outdoors universal? And what do we mean by “nature” anyway?’ A question posed by Bridget Snaith (University of East London) whose own research debunks Western constructs and challenges the notion that there is a commonlyaccepted concept of landscape.

So, what constitutes a truly inclusive green space? One that is ‘viable, healthful, and buzzing with interesting activity’, she explained, subsequently noting the juxtaposition between the wants and needs of white and minority ethnic communities spanning Stratford and Croydon.

Given all of this, what is the role of the landscape professional in resolving these conflicts? How can we effectively campaign for change?

Thamesmead as a semi-rural idyll when first complete.

© Peabody Trust

‘It’s hard for us to be advocates,’ admitted Anna Jorgensen (University of Sheffield). ‘How do we make change happen in a time of Brexit and austerity? In a world that is constantly changing? And how do we create a vision for the future that will carry people along with us?’

There are actions we can undertake. Where climate change is concerned, landscape professionals can support policy frameworks and feed evidence into the biodiversity net gain debate. The LI itself will be working to facilitate more training around this area (see our Climate Change Policy set out on page 65).

Most importantly, we must continue to illustrate the value of landscape, and we can do this by building a new narrative and seizing the opportunity to engage the next generation.

Let’s get digital

Much of this value rests on how relevant landscape can be within our modern world and the ways we engage both hard-to-reach communities and youth groups. And how can landscape possibly continue to provide refuge in a world where the screen is most dominant?

Vimla Appadoo discusses digital responses to the world.

© Paul Upward

Accelerating tech progress, which permeates our life, has undoubtedly altered our connection to the natural environment. However, as a digital artist with keen interest in the environment, Kasia Molga believes nature can act as ‘partner and collaborator’ in the technological world; the rise of Virtual and Augmented Reality in practice and the Urban Minds app (as mentioned earlier) all good examples.

Professor Pia Fricker (Aalto University, Finland) outlined the ways in which technology can ‘capture and reveal the real sense of a place’ and even ‘apply meaning to that site’.

Kasia Molga moderates the digital session and introduces her work from South Africa.

© Paul Upward

Evidently, digital placemaking ‘need not be confined to the screen’ at all, urged Jo Morrison, Director of Digital Innovation at Calvium, providing realworld examples, such as the researchled NavSta app – a collaborative project with Transport for London (TfL) and Transport System Catapult.

‘In fact, much of the problem lies not in the image, but our consumption of it’, prompted Vimla Appadoo, Service Designer at FutureGov and Founder of The Northern Collective.

Making specific reference to social media and over-popularised iconography, she asked: ‘Is it just an avocado on toast you’re seeing? Or a symbol of unsustainable food production, pressure on farmers, fragility of inter-market dependency? We must question the bigger pictureof our reality.’

Landscape of a changing world

Film by Olivia French on climate extinction shown to the audience.

© Olivia French

With such disparity between image and meaning, how are we to ensure that our designs resonate at all? That the places we make meet the desires and demands of our time? In our rapidly modern and increasingly multicultural cities, are we creating spaces that are, in fact, more divisive than inclusive?

‘We need to literally look at the city through the eyes of local residents,’ urged Will Sandy, Landscape Designer and founder of the Edible Bus Stop initiative. Reflecting on recent project, ‘Reframing Spaces Caracas’ (a collaboration with the British Council) upon researching participatory design schemes to rebuild communities in Venezuela, Will was privy to the unique worldview of the city-dwellers, who highlighted both positive and negative perspectives of their surroundings that were undoubtedly invisible to an outsider.

Mathew Haslam from Hardscape presenting an LI90 coaster made especially for the occasion, to Rainer Stange.

© Paul Upward

While Professor Rainer Stange, President of the Norwegian Landscape Association, unpacked how parks, specifically, present the ‘perfect opportunity to represent a wider cultural landscape’, through use of local materials, by example.

In this respect, it’s clear that where keeping people, place and nature connected is concerned, co-design and community engagement are key, while pioneering research led by many of the speakers of today, can move us toward a more dynamic, diverse and resilient public realm.

A vision of the future

Understanding the landscape of the Park an explanation from LDA’s Andrew Harland.

© Paul Upward

There is a lot to think about as we move forward, with the forum fuelling some difficult debate and raising new dilemmas.

How do we stay relevant and relatable in our changing world? Can we be both climate-conscious and data-driven, given the carbon footprint of the tech industry? How will the role and purpose of the landscape professional change in the wake of the declared climate emergency? And who should step up and lead us through this time of transition?

Just a few days after the Festival of Ideas the Landscape Institute Board of Trustees declared a Climate Emergency. Further details are available on page 65 of the LI Journal.