My Priorities

In my design work I like to work with clean and simple designs that are interactive and playful as well. I like to use as much of natural and ecological processes as possible using a holistic approach. I realise looking back at my projects through my previous years that I also incorporate contrasting elements in most of my designs. Since my first year sustainability and ecology has had a strong presence in my work. I think the challenge can sometimes be combining these priorities with an end result that is contemporary and innovative. 

Proposal for community allotments on a back street in Waterloo.

In the last project in my second year I designed a Street scheme incorporating suds and water collecting structures and community allotments. There is a lot of talk at the moment about the housing estates and their landscapes (it was the subject of the Landscape Institute conference in November - see previous posts).  I think a good safe surrounding street will help and community allotments would transform spaces that mostly consists of short mown grass into a productive and beautiful space. 

This year when working on a canal restoration project I struggled at first to justify the restoration of something man made. After researching and looking into the subject more I realised it was a challenge to work on schemes that you might not like the look at at first. Through research I came up with the solution of growing short rotation willow coppice along the restored canal - then canal could then be utilised to transport the wood chips from the willow and machinery and staff could be shared between farmers. The willow coppice also act as a filter of the runoff from the agricultural nitrogen water and cleans it before entering the canal. 

Image showing the cycle of Short Rotation Willow Coppice.

I think this project shows that you can make a productive landscape interesting and beautiful - at the same time as being multifunctional. I like designing landscapes that use natural processes whilst responding to climate change. 

In the next project we will be given the opportunity to work with the public and other partners. This is something I am very interested in and am looking forward to. I think sometimes too many designs are thought up in the office and in the future I would like to have the opportunity to work with people and practices that work with the public and also design schemes for management of spaces and just not the space. As this is something that is very important.

I like the idea of working for a local authority or government organisation - I know that the get good and interesting projects to work on. I wrote my management report on Sutcliffe park which was designed by landscape architects working for the environment agency. 

In terms of practices I am a big fan of Latz and Partner in Germany - in the UK my favourite practice is Land Use Consultants. I would love to have the opportunity to work for a practice that has other departments as welll as landscape architects - such as ecologists. As this is something I am interested in learning more about. 

Eden Project

http://www.landuse.co.uk/portfolio/project.php?pageNum_RSpages=6&totalRows_RSpages=18&id=22

Photography

Went to a lecture held by the head of photography at Kingston, Vince Wade to inspire us to be more playful with our photography. The advice was to challenge the 'of' of a photo - to consider what you are capturing in the rectangle. To make your photos visually interesting and to represent the world in way that it really exists. To take photos in a non perspective way as well - to convey and provoke more feelings in your photos. We were introduced to some very cool photographers. My favourites were Georges Rousse and Stephen Gill.

http://www.actuphoto.com/pronews/ton_dossier/news_7308_3.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorfiot/2701695412/

Georges Rousses says that he likes the empty canvas and that it inspires him. His art is supposed to be viewed from certain viewpoints to achieve the wanted affect. He always photographs his art as well. I think his photos and art are playful, simple and great. It makes you look twice or more!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/87555150@N00/1778593498/

Stephen Gill is a photographer who has learnt to haunt the places that haunt him (quote from his website). In his collection Hackney flowers he collected flowers, berries and seeds from around hackney and then pressed and layered photos from hackney and took photographs from. The photos are beautiful and the the feeling he gets from doing his work this way is very different from what you can do in photoshop. His work is holistic and beautiful!

http://www.stephengill.co.uk/index.php?/project/portfolio/

Kew Gardens

Compost and Waste Management

I have been to Kew several times – but this time I was given the chance to see a bit of the behind the scene of the running and management. As part of our theoretical module on the course we met David Barnes, the Manager of Horticultural Support at Kew.

Kew Garden has a responsibility to protect and take care of its collections of plants and seeds. With this comes a responsibility to its surroundings and setting as well. Kew is located on flat, dry and free draining gravely and sandy soil. The soil gets very dry in the summer – with nutrients draining away. Kew is also located on the Heathrow fly path and the emissions and pollution also affects the garden and its species.

Irrigation is a must for Kew. The irrigation system has recently been updated.  The water comes from the mains and fills up a 70 000 litre storage tank – from there it leads to water ring circulating the whole site and from there feeding directly to the plants. This reduces the leaks and makes it easier to control which areas you water. 

Rainwater is collected from the main buildings and fills up tanks. The rainwater collecting system is not as developed as they would like – but is something they are looking on improving for the future.

The composting system is well developed at Kew. All the plant material from the maintenance on site is broken down to compost on site. It is all a natural and organic process with only stable manoeuvre added to the other ingredients of water and CO2.  The manoeuvre comes from the stables at St John’s Wood.

The compost yard has been there for 10 years and is built on concrete with a moat surrounding and collecting the runoff water from the compost heaps. This is to protect the Thames from runoff water which has very high levels of nutrients. The runoff water is instead collected and lead into a tank where it is filtered and then used to water the compost heaps. 

The materials are sorted on the yard by heaps of: herbaceous, manoeuvre and woody materials.  The woody materials are shredded and screened. Whilst the herbaceous materials only need shredding.  The wood chips are mixed 4:1 with the manoeuvre. Water is added and the heap is turned once to further speed up the process. It takes about 8 weeks before it is ready to go back out in the gardens to be used as surface mulch.

Close up look at the wood chips mixed with manoeuvre and to the right the wood chips are completely broken down into surface mulch.

The herbaceous materials are mixed on a 1:1 with manoeuvre. No water is added to this process as the herbaceous materials already have a high level of water.  The compost is ready after 6 weeks and is used as soil conditioner which is dug down to mix with the soil on a deeper level.

Herbaceous material starting to break down into compost.

The gardens are saving half million pounds every year by producing their own compost and it is obviously the most sustainable alternative as well.

An interesting fact about the compost heaps are the high levels of energy that they generate.  David Barnes mentioned that pipes could be lead underneath the heaps to help with possible water heating for an example. This is something I am surprised that Kew has not investigated further yet.

The talk also reached a point of discussion the waste generated by the public and if this is recycled. At the moment there is no recycling in place for this. David Barnes said that most of the waste from the public is high level of low weight plastics. Which is costly and complicated to recycle and there is issues with storing that amount of waste on site. But he said that he would like to put some systems in place.

I think the clue for this may lay in the management of the visitors. Waste is something that is hard to control – cause even if the food and products sold on site are being controlled  and more sustainable – you can’t keep people from bringing in their own food and waste to the site. 

The issue of carbon footprint was also discussed and I think that David Barnes answered the questions very well. He said how do measure the carbon footprint for a site for Kew. There is obviously the energy the site uses and the carbon that it emits. There is also certain inherited carbon in the buildings and also all the people visiting Kew.

The later can be put done to trying to manage your visitors and the way you can encourage them to think about the way the travel to the site for an example. Like the Eden Project gives discounts to everyone that arrives by cycle or foot.  This could be tried at Kew by maybe give discounts to everyone that produce a travel card or people showing that they live locally and can show that they walked to the site.

The visit was interesting and it was good to see the composting process which is surprisingly simple and organic. I think I site like Kew still has a long way to go in sustainable management processes – but by listening to David Barnes you realise that the interest is there and it comes downs to costs and procedures.

Medium

Medium is a creative design studio in Sweden. They do projects related to public space, architecture, visual art and graphic design. Their work concentrate on everyday life.

They have been trying to set up an exhibition called Bouncing Buildings - where they invite architects to design bouncy buildings. I think it is a great idea! Not sure if the exhibition ever got off the ground though...

The have also curated an exhibition creating an art museum for kids. Think the art museum for kids could have been taken a lot further. A lot of 'grown up' art I think that kids will like. Interactive art mainly.

http://www.mediumism.com/happiness.html

http://www.mediumism.com/museum.html

http://www.mediumism.com/bouncy.html