Where Wildflowers Bloom

Building Design Partnership (BDP) is a huge, global multidisciplinary company with specialists in all areas of design, engineering and planning, working together to make places for people. Their portfolio features huge masterplans and restoration projects such as the New Pujiang Centre in Shanghai and the Jakarta River Development in Indonesia, recovering these cities from the damaging effects of rapid urbanization. The Jakarta project was supposedly completed in 2019 but there aren’t finished photos available, a running theme throughout their online portfolio, it seems. However, I have selected an image from the proposed eco-district development in Les Gargues, Aubagne, France. Chosen for the ‘natural landscape’ and wonderful variety of trees. The plan for this landscape reveals what looks to be a successful integration of the natural and built environment. We can see a variety of habitats within the image along with sustainable measures to manage water, including vegetated swales...

The OLIN Studio have a distinctive attitude towards landscape design, one that is traditional in a sense and unconventional in others. Many other landscape practises today, rightly place emphasis on climate mitigation measures and put them at the core of their company values and strategy, whereas OLIN takes it back to the basics. That landscapes are intended to look beautiful and are paramount to the recreation and interaction of human beings, with craft as the seminal component to that delivery.   There are a few projects in their portfolio that display a wonderful array of colourful, curiously all located in the City of Dreams!! The City Market of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Convention Center and the West LA Courthouse are all renovation projects, giving new life to the surrounding neighbourhoods. Bright colours, mixed patterns and vibrant planting schemes inspire excitement and fun in all three projects, something I intend for the eco and creative quarter at North Place. W...

PWP Landscape Architecture are “constructing landscapes that refine nature, engage culture and sustain them both.”  Their design for The Quzhou Sports Centre Park is a project that piques my interest the most. With buildings that are truly disguised as a landscape. This picture provides a precedent for the ‘dome building’ (probably not called this) in my design for North Place. Featuring both the sloped, hilly sides that lead to a dome crown that sits atop – I guess my ideas are proving unoriginal, but I am pleased to be able to see something similar, being executed so beautiful. I particularly enjoy the disguised access points, the magical enigma of ‘what’s inside’ and a real-life depiction of what feels like a futuristic fantasy world, where man lives inside the mountains. It is the landform (or built form?!? Both, I guess?) that I admire most about this project, along with the dramatic and slender pine border.

Grant Associates, perhaps best known for their design of the nature park Gardens by the Bay, Singapore, are a landscape practise that are exploring what regenerative design and the circular economy means to landscape architecture. They are involved in both grand global projects and those that are small scale and local with the intention to take action against the multitude of environmental and economic crises we face today.   Of course, Gardens by the Bay is an outstanding project. Yet I struggled to find much else from their website portfolio that inspired me. Their designs are varied in style, at different scales and for commercial, residential and public domains and it appears that their hearts are in the right place – their focus on a circular economy is particularly admired and appreciated. But there are only 15 projects on their website, with the majority kind of.. dare I say… basic? I have selected some images of the Barangaroo South Public Domain, Sydney due to the mate...

SLA are a well-known nature-based design studio with a mission to ‘design places for life. All life.’ Reinvent Paris – Ternes Villiers is a project on top of the Boulevard Peripherique ring road. The project intends not only to bring a new, public green-realm but to combine nature-based ecosystem services with over 200 plant and tree species that improve the micro-climate, absorb water and clean the air from pollutants. All facades are covered by climbing plants while trees perch on every floor. I have chosen this project, not particularly for how it looks but for its services. It is a clear representation of how green we can go with our multi-story buildings, something I plan for the multi-storey residential building in my design for North Place. Another similarity, is that they have a tea plantation and a tea café! This is an idea I had at the beginning of our project, a sustainable alternative to imported coffee. The tea rooms are one of my favourite features in my design – and ...