Projects 2:
20th century, Millennium/Olympics,
Design and Vision

Brasilia

Brasilia was planned and developed as a great experiment in utopian modernism by the architects Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.  From the air, it is roughly in the shape of a cross, but many say it resembles an aeroplane or a butterfly. 

Its buildings and forms are exceptionally beautiful in their stark modernist purity.  The city is planned in strict zones and car traffic is separated from pedestrian traffic with little regard for pedestrians, though, and for these among many other reasons the design has been very controversial from the very beginning.  Still, it is a monument to modernist style and an indelible symbol for Brazil's democracy despite its functional shortcomings.

The Donnell Garden

Thomas Church is often considered the 'founder of the modern garden' in America, and he was certainly the most celebrated of the landscape architects practicing the 'California Style'. 

His ideas and design style were founded firmly in modernism, promising functional forms, simplicity and elegance, and gracious living. 

The Donnell Garden is perhaps his most famous work, based in 'biomorphic' (organically shaped) sculptural forms.  Thomas Church practiced at a time of great suburban growth of the single family dwelling, and the majority of Thomas Church's work was residential

Stoke on Trent National Garden Festival 1986

The second of five UK garden festivals, the site at Stoke spread over 73 ha of derelict and contaminated land of former pottery, coal mining and iron and steel works.

The Stoke masterplan designed by Atkins Sheppard, Fiddler & Associates had five principal areas: central woodland ridge [of the buried waste], formal gardens, lakes, labyrinth and an arena. ‘British Gardens’ was the main theme for this site.

Unlike the mainland European garden festival sites which have been kept as public open spaces, the UK festival gardens were seen as part of a three phase programme of land reclamation and restoration to provide infrastructure, structure planting and an attractive environment for subsequent commercial and residential development.

Harlow New Town, Essex

Designated in 1947 and contemporary with Stevenage, Crawley and Hemel Hempstead, the new town at Harlow was one of a series of orbital new towns built to relieve overcrowding in London as part of Patrick Abercrombie’s vision for the 1944 Greater London Plan.

Harlow was one the few built predominantly on a green field site. It was planned by Frederick Gibberd with Sylvia Crowe collaborating on the landscape. The design intent was that the natural landscape should be within walking distance of every home, and there should be an equal balance between building and open space maintained throughout the whole town.

Commonwealth Institute, Kensington High Street, London

Established as the Imperial Institute in 1887 to promote research, this evolved into the Commonwealth Institute in 1958 with a mission to house permanent exhibitions from commonwealth countries promoting trade, culture and education.

Relocating to a site adjacent to Holland Park, Robert Mathews, Johnson-Marshall and Partners designed an innovative Commonwealth Institute building in 1962 with a distinctive and complex parabolic copper roof, creating the illusion of a ‘tent in the park’. The gardens, including a reflecting lake, lawns, and flagpoles for commonwealth members were designed by Sylvia Crowe. The building listed Grade 11*, has been closed since 2002 and redevelopment of the site is currently being planned.

Milton Keynes

By far the most ambitious and successful of the new towns projects was Milton Keynes with linear parks running through the city – converting the several watercourses and floodplains from a difficulty into a virtue.

The influential post-war landscape architect Peter Youngman was consultant on the masterplan and ensured the primacy of green landscape in what was later dubbed “the City of Trees.”

Today, the city continues to enjoy high standards of landscape management, maintenance and regular upgrading and adaptation.

Gasworks Park, Seattle

Gas Works Park in Seattle, Washington, USA is a public park, designed by Richard Haag, on the brownfield (former industrial or derelict land) site of a defunct gasification plant.  The site was significantly polluted, requiring it to be capped off.

It was an astounding departure from the picturesque park, choosing to maintain and value the rusting industrial remains on the site as a record of its history. 

Today we almost take it for granted that no land is truly wasteland, and to a large degree because of the success of  Gas Works Park, which has become a symbol of the practice of both reclaiming land and valuing our industrial heritage. 

King County Jailhouse Garden

Martha Schwartz, with the then office of Peter Walker and Martha Schwartz, was challenged to create a nearly indestructible courtyard garden for the King County Jail in Seattle, Washington. 

In a typically postmodern style, it combines playful, colourful geometric forms that consciously refer to the clipped topiary  of Baroque gardens such as Versailles, Vaux-le-Vicomte or Hampton Court .

Schwartz's landscapes have been criticised for promoting style over substance, but her designs continue to excite lively discussion and controversy. 

Landschafstpark Duisburg-Nord

The Landscape Park at Duisburg-Nord in Germany, designed by Latz + Partner, bears a certain kinship with Richard Haag's Gas Works Park.  It is a massive park developed on the site of a former coal and steel plant in the industrial hinterland of Duisburg. 

Like Gas Works Park, the design embraces the site's industrial past, using the steel mill buildings to house gardens, play areas, scuba diving, and climbing walls, amongst many other uses.  Rather than capping off the pollution, as happened at Gas Works Park, the land is being cleaned with plants that are specifically chosen to suck poisons out of the soil.  This process is called phytoremediation.

Duisburg-Nord is a powerful example of new attitudes combining with old technologies to produce comfortable and exciting places for people.

Schouwburgplein

Schouwburgplein is a public square that occupies the roof of an underground car park in the Rotterdam's centre city.  Lightweight paving materials were used to avoid overburdening the structure below.

West 8's design for the square, on a formerly derelict urban site, is intended as a 'stage' for urban activity, providing a clear, uncluttered space that is framed by the cultural and retail buildings surrounding the space. 

The most arresting feature of the square is the set of four hydraulic lights which move at random intervals and which concentrate spots of powerful light down onto the square's surface at night.  These lights are intended to evoke the powerful structures and cranes of the city's busy port.

Greenwich Millennium Village

The Greenwich Millennium Village is a housing estate on the Greenwich Peninsula near the former Millennium Dome.  Its masterplan was designed by Ralph Erskine, an architect who believes strongly in ensuring that buildings are placed carefully into a landscape context.

The design for Greenwich Millennium Village takes sustainability seriously and holistically, aiming to provide for the social and cultural needs of the people living there and ensuring that the development steps lightly upon the planet. 

Landscape architects are frequently masterplanners for similar developments, and fruitful collaboration with architects and planners is crucial to achieving the best results.

New Islington

New Islington is a major regeneration initiative in the suburbs of Manchester. It will transform a formerly neglected neighbourhood with hundreds of new homes as part of a mixed-use scheme providing shops, leisure, offices, schools and a health clinic.

The regeneration will also provide new pedestrian and cycle links along the Ashton and Rochdale canals, which will also be developed as a valuable wildlife corridor. It also includes the first new park to be built in Manchester since the 19th Century.

Grand Canal Square, Dublin

Grand Canal Square, an exciting new urban square in Dublin’s Docklands, was designed by Martha Schwartz Partners and opened in June 2007.

The Dublin Docklands Development Agency commissioned the project, which, with its unusual lighting columns, has become an instant icon and has played a major role in the transformation of the idea of landscape in Dublin.

The scheme cost around £5m and was completed in just over two years.

Leeds-Liverpool Canal Link

Built in time for Liverpool’s year in the spotlight as the European Capital of Culture in 2008, the £20m extension of the Leeds-Liverpool canal is at the heart of a massive regeneration project taking place in the north-west city.

The project will see the canal extend into the city centre, across the Pier Head and in the front of the Three Graces buildings on the banks of the River Mersey.

Landscape architects EDAW master-planned the public spaces and worked with in-house British Waterways landscape architects on the detail.

Sheffield Sheaf Square

Sheaf Square and Howard Street are the key public space components in the £60 million Sheffield Station Regeneration Project

The development creates a welcoming gateway for pedestrians to reach the city centre from the station as well as a lively square with the opportunities for events.

From inception to completion, the project was led by landscape architects in a creative partnership.