Month: July 2017

A Child of the Landscape

I consider my kids to be lucky. We spend the vast majority of our time as a family outside. They get to interact with the landscape in all kinds of remarkable ways and pretty much permanently have their necks arched to the sky shouting “bird” or “tree” in their chirpy toddler voices. Seeing their wide eyed faces and boisterous bodies running through forests, crunching on leaves, throwing pine cones and generally covered head to toe in dirt, has led me to want to touch on the importance of the interaction between our children and the landscape.

As landscape architects, it is a common perception that we only really design for children when the project dictates it; playgrounds, schools, nurseries and other similar child focused environments. But should we be designing for children in everything we do?

Outdoor play is linked with the physical, emotional and psycho-social development of children. It has been linked with confidence building, the development of both fine and gross motor skills as well as muscle-strength, coordination and enhancement of ability to learn.

More than this, interaction with the landscape gives children from an early age, the chance to understand the importance of the natural environment to our world. My son only yesterday pointed out the wind blowing in his hair which prompted me to spend 10 minutes trying to explain the environmental importance of the wind to my son’s two year old brain. From the quizzical and confused look on his face, I’m fairly confident he had no idea what I was talking about but nevertheless, just being outside had got him asking questions. Interaction of children with nature leads to discovery, to greater understanding and to learning.

Children interact with landscape in a way that is unique to them. They run their fingers along hedgerows, peer into ponds and roll on their bellies down hills. Landscapes to children are there for interaction not observation and they reap the benefits of this tactile approach.

If we really think about it, most of our projects here at Studio 31 will come into contact with children in some form throughout their life cycle. A residential garden might double as a family play area, a commercial project might be located on the way to school, a health care centre might provide treatment for children or their parents and relatives. We are given the brief for schemes by adults but when we design them, it is not only those adults who will benefit from them. There are plenty of architects like Matt Architecture who already try to inject just a little inner child into some of their schemes and I wonder if this ethos could apply even more so for the world of Landscape Architecture. Perhaps our designs should not only fulfil the adult brief but go further to consider both the interaction of our children with them and perhaps even the inner child in all of us.

 

Photo by Alexander Dummer

What is a Garden?

Work demands made it impossible for us to go to the RHS Hampton Court flower show last week but following the award winners on BBC sparked a lively debate in the office that we felt compelled to share.

The conceptual gardens at Hampton court this year comprised a vibrant selection of weird and wonderful ideas including; a garden elevated above a clear water tank making an effort to explain the science behind soil (which, as a science geek at heart, I loved) and a plot of accessorised Himalayan Birch trees representing the molecular structure of a solid object. These conceptual ideas transformed into garden designs harked back to Chelsea’s best in show only a few weeks ago where James Basson’s gold winning garden was inspired by a disused quarry. There wasn’t a rosebud or foxglove in sight and if the daily mail headline was anything to go by, it’s fair to say he divided opinion. So, in our small Essex office, we pondered (or rather argued), if these are award winning “gardens” then what actually is a garden?

We know this isn’t a new debate. It was in fact one of the first questions asked many moons ago on one of our Director’s degree course but the debate got so heated, that at one stage we actually looked up the Oxford Dictionary definition “a piece of ground adjoining a house, in which grass flowers or shrubs may be grown” And at that point, we all agreed that we disagreed with this one, which in itself was interesting. Does a garden have to adjoin a house? Does it have to be a piece of ground? Does it have to grow grass, flowers or shrubs?

We all have our opinions of what a garden is and the definitions are as broad and encompassing as the gardens themselves are diverse. Is a window box a garden? Does a garden have to have plants? Could it be entirely hard landscaping? Do you need to be able to sit in it? Walk through it? Or perhaps just admire it? What about terrariums? Greenhouses? A jungle of indoor plants?

Critics are saying that designers are taking the “conceptual” element of design too far and supporters are hitting back that good design should spark debate and push conventional boundaries. I suppose this is especially pertinent in competition settings like the RHS flower shows.

From a portfolio perspective, we have to admit that if you look even solely at our current projects, there is such variety there. They range from the traditional country estate, to health centres, tree houses, roof terraces and the contemporary modern home.

Our conclusion…the rather wonderful thing about a garden is it defies definition. It can’t be restricted by the confines of a dictionary or a placed neatly into a labelled box (no pun intended). A garden is a feeling, a dynamic, vibrant and ephemeral concept all of its own.

So, is a rather beautiful pomegranate tree and some meadow plants suspended above a glass box, a garden? Perhaps the question should be; why isn’t it a garden?

 

Photo by feey