Connecting people, spaces and places – a can of worms or a life time commitment?

Speaker: Ian Baggott

The talk will explore the changing role of urban green space professionals with respect to community engagement and how government policy has influenced this. Ian will explore what connection and engagement mean, what forms they might take, what levels there might be and why does it happen. Who leads, who facilitates and supports, who does and doesn’t get involved.

He will try to use examples from his 30 years’ experience in the sector including working with diverse and disconnected communities, contested landscapes and uncomfortable stories.

Ian Baggott is the MD of CFP, a Landscape and Heritage consultancy, which he set up over 20 years ago. Over that time the small and highly skilled team has delivered over 600 projects including almost 150 NLHF funded schemes. He has written national guidance, led national research, given evidence to parks enquiries and a parks APPG. He holds Fellowships of the Royal Society for Arts and the Royal Geographical Society, is an Associate Member of the Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates, a collaborator with the Centre for Heritage Research and Training at Swansea University and has recently been a visiting lecturer at the Welsh School of Architecture.

Being Awkward

Speaker: David Lambert

Community is an over-used word for an undervalued resource; an abused resource too, often taken for granted by decision-makers and policy makers.  Community participation often takes the form of resistance rather than collaboration.  Its stance, initially at least, is that of the outsider and its bottom-up perspective is inevitably disruptive of top-down views.   Almost by definition, community input is contrary and pugnacious at least until trust has been earnt.   For a community to make its voice heard it has to learn new rules of engagement and even learn a new language; it has to develop a thick skin to resist feeling excluded or patronised; and somehow to convert the fuel of anger into meaningful participation.

David Lambert is director of the Parks Agency.  These days he focuses less on consultancy and more on his local community.  He is a director of a community farm and is learning to be an activist, a milkman, a carer, a biodynamic gardener and an undertaker.

EVA – Lanxmeer, Culemborg, The Netherlands

Speaker: Dr Jan Woudstra

The concept of eco-housing has been well-established since the 1970s, with experimental schemes around the world. However, the notion of sustainability in the 1980s gave the concept a new incentive of trying to achieve a circular economy. What were the new techniques required to develop a sustainable energy policy, and what about a renewed vision for agriculture in a way that respects natural processes? How can such ideas and visions be carried more broadly with renewed ethics of responsibility for resources and solidarity with other peoples around the globe? These were some of the questions that helped to define the collaborative approach developed at EVA – Lanxmeer, which prides itself as a spatially high-quality living environment that is well-integrated within and in harmony with the wider landscape, both rural and urban. Achieved though a democratic process facilitated by landscape architect Marleen Kaptein from 1995, professional advice was provided by Copijn landscape architects and Joachim Eble architects.  

Public - Private - Volunteers – Charities: the changing face of Landscape Practice and the implications for communities

Speaker: Helen Brown

From the late 1970s the increasing adoption of public / private partnerships have had a huge impact on the delivery and outcomes for our rural and urban landscapes and their communities. It also has driven large changes to a career in Landscape Architecture.

 The talk will examine some of the implications for publicly funded landscape practice and projects with the move to arm’s length trusts, charities, private consultancy, the use of volunteers, friends of groups and how this sector has developed, for better or worse.     

Helen Brown CMLI (retired) has had a sequence of careers in the visual arts from surface textile design to Landscape Architecture. She worked in public practice on major park restoration and conservation projects including the EU Life funded ‘London Lakes Project’ and ‘The History of Battersea Park’ a public digital interactive exhibition which won the 1993 LI Comms Award, both at Battersea Park as part of Jacky McCabe’s Landscape team at Wandsworth Council; and also at Crystal Palace Park with Bromley Council’s LA project team with Gustafson Porter’s restoration, conservation and development project, HLF funded project.  She was a design tutor at University of Greenwich and taught Historic Garden Conservation and Design with Community amongst other topics.

With the mantra ‘participation not consultation’, Helen is active in community greening projects in SE London, and is an officer in the newly designated Charlton Neighbourhood Forum. She is currently working with the public and several management organisations on securing an historic landscape study for Charlton House’s C17 landscapes and gardens.

Refurbishing the Eco-city Augustenborg Malmö, Sweden – social processes and landscape design at the turn of the millennium

Speakers: Ann-Sofi Högborg and Bengt Persson

The housing area of Augustenborg in Malmö, Sweden, is stunning according to its loveliness and functioning as a working landscape - for drainage, biodiversity and play, but also by the fact that it was refurbished 25 years ago with an existing community. Since the 1940s the Augustenborg residential area has been a model and a success story. When Augustenborg was planned and built in 1948-1952, it was the first major housing development project in post-war Malmö. The story of Malmö’s modern transformation that puts focus on sustainable urban development, in fact began in Augustenborg. When the Eco-city project was implemented in the late 1990s, it was the first time an existing residential area had been transformed through a major sustainability initiative and environmental regeneration. In this FOLAR talk we will focus on the social processes and the landscape design that led to what Augustenborg is today.

Ann-Sofi Högborg, MSc, Landscape Architect, owner of Svenska Landskap AB (Swedish Landscapes Ltd). Expert in socially based residential landscape design. Responsible for social processes and landscape design of the first part of the refurbishment of the residential gardens in the Eco-city Augustenborg 1999-2001.

Bengt Persson, AgrD, MSc, Landscape Architect, owner of Landskapsarkitekterna i Lund AB (Landscape Architects of Lund Ltd). Expert on the history of 20th century residential gardens in Sweden, co-author of Swedish Residential Yards 1930-1959. One of the editors of the anthology The Eco-city Augustenborg – experiences and lessons learned, published 2021.

FOLAR Annual Symposium at The MERL

This year’s FOLAR Symposium will be on the subject of the Landscape of Communities. These are seen as amenity landscapes which respond first to the wishes and ways of the local community, whether local residents or workers. Landscape Institute President Elect, Carolin Göhler, will chair the day

Speakers include: Leah McNally of the London Wildlife Trust on their community involvement; Guy Redmond of Leaves of Green on their work for parish councils on nature based green space; Helen John on the Crossbones Graveyard and Garden of Remembrance: an intergenerational legacy concerning her work for the Bankside Open Spaces Trust in Southwark; Jan Woudstra on the work of the landscape gardener Robert Marnock’s concept for the Ladbroke Grove Housing development in the mid nineteenth century; Sarah Cooke from the Groundwork Trust on their work with communities in London.

One theme for the FOLAR symposia is how the past can inform the present and the future. This is a symposium with full opportunity for discussion with question time after each talk and a general discussion with the speakers at the end of the day, so everyone can have the opportunity to speak.

There will be time to talk and network, to explore the MERL’s pop up exhibition in the reading room (showing material from our, and other, archives on landscapes for housing), time to browse and buy from the FOLAR book stall, and more! .

FOLAR members and non members are welcome We look forward to seeing you there!  Numbers are limited to fifty.  

Book your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/728908483897?aff=oddtdtcreator

Landscape of Housing

In the planning and design of housing, the presence and arrangement of outdoor spaces will be of particular interest to future residents. But is there a yawning gap between what is shown on paper and what is implemented later on the ground? Will children have places to play and teenagers somewhere to hang out? Will there be space to grow food and to garden? Will there be trees to shade the footpaths in hot weather? Can people walk and cycle safely? Will rainwater be collected and reused on site? And most critically of all, how will the landscape be managed and budgeted for?

We will bring together an exciting line up of speakers and topics including Karen Fitzsimon on New Ash Green, Prof Otto Saumarez Smith on the Mark III new towns, Gerry Kemp on Byker Wall, Drs Luca Csepely-Knorr, Amber Roberts and Matthew Steele on Darbourne and Darke and Lillington Street, Alice Grahame on Walter Segal self-build housing in Lewisham, and Paula Garvey on Kings Cross and Elephant Park.

Join us for our first live event back at The MERL. There will be time to talk and network, to explore the MERL’s pop up exhibition in the reading room (showing material from our, and other, archives on landscapes for housing, now online exhibition time to browse and buy from the FOLAR book stall, and more.

Some of The MERL’s pop-up exhibition items have been transferred to an online exhibition at FOLAR’s suggestion. We are thrilled to include this here! The exhibition explores the symposium themes highlighting some key contemporary Landscape Architects, using documents and drawings from the Landscape Institute collections held in the MERL’s Special Collections.

Click on the image to find out more.

Three further talks which formed part of the programme will be available at some future point.

Professor Otto Saumarez Smith on the Mark III new towns will be available in Castles in the Air series.

Dr Luca Csepely-Knorr, Dr Amber Roberts and Dr Matthew Steele on Lillington Street and Darbourne and Darke, and Paula Garvey on Kings Cross & and Elephant Park London]

The social value of land

The land has a profound impact on who we are, on our health and our wellbeing, but it is valued as though it was a soulless commodity. In this talk Professor Flora Samuel will offer a method for taking the social value of land and its impact on people into account in decisions about land use. She will argue for a digital map based system that allows people to input on a constant basis into decisions about their places. This proposal is based on a series of recent funded research projects based at the University of Reading, Mapping Eco Social Assets, Community Consultation for Quality of Life and the Better Places Toolkit.

Flora Samuel is an architect, author and academic and is Professor of Architecture in the Built Environment at the University of Reading. Concerned by the seeming inability of the Architecture profession in Britain to convey to the public its value, her work focuses on architects, their skills and how they communicate them to the outside world. Her particular focus is on homes, housing and neighbourhoods in the UK and beyond. She feels strongly that a new model of architectural education is needed in order that the profession becomes more relevant. Her new model encompasses research, collaboration and business skills allied to creativity, design and social responsibility. She was appointed as the first RIBA Vice President for Research in 2018 and leads the Community Consultation for Quality of Life, an AHRC funded project aiming to produce a Code of Conduct for Consultation across the four nations.

Imagining desirable landscape futures

We live in a period of rapid environmental change with potentially great impact on the landscapes where people develop their livelihoods, interact, and shape their cultures. Today’s actions to protect the environment are based on perceptions of what could be good or bad in future, beneficial or detrimental, necessary, or excessive. Our visions of future landscapes are inevitably based on past and current experiences, and today’s solutions may not have an enduring effect. This talk by Dr Eirini Saratsi considers how our imaginative futures reflect values of care for specific places and considerations of potential challenges and opportunities for the landscapes we would like to live in in the future. The insights come from a project based on public dialogue, carried out in 2014, where people were asked to craft and visualise their desirable vision of the future in 2060 and consider the types of actions necessary to achieve this. These visions compare and, to some degree, validate current policies and social actions for tackling environmental challenges and can provide suggestions for landscape planning and management in the future.

Dr Saratsi is a human geographer with longstanding interests in landscape and environmental studies and works in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Reading. Eirini has collaborated with colleagues in the UK and internationally to deliver a range of research projects concerned with integrating cultural and social values in landscape management and the role of arts and participatory approaches in environmental decision making and the protection of nature.

Contrasting Fortunes - Two high-value designed landscapes in Reading

Landscape architect Tony Edwards will outline the transformation of 180 acres of a poor quality flood plain into a business park with international appeal and a variety of awards. His involvement with this project has been for over thirty years with a continuing role in its management and this has been a key factor in its success. How difficult was that to engineer? And how typical is this of his other landscape projects?

Broad Street, Reading was pedestrianised in 1992 and the redesign was constructed in three phases. Colin Moore, of Moore Piet + Brookes Landscape Architects and lead designers for the project, will introduce the scheme and consider issues concerning maintenance, funding and changes in city wide planning decisions that have impacted on this carefully conceived project.

Tony Edwards qualified as an architect and worked for Sir Basil Spence on Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks before changing to other practices and undertaking housing design. He qualified as a landscape architect and joined Brian Clouston and Partners where he became a director involved in a variety of schemes including large scale reclamation of steelworks, amenity tips, gas works, new housing and regeneration of housing estates. He is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute.

Having formed new practices after leaving Clouston , Tony has been responsible for further large scale master-planning projects, residential landscape schemes, business parks, schools and commercial schemes. His practice worked with Michal Van Valkenberg from the USA on the white water rafting scheme at the Olympics in 2012. He has appeared as an expert witness at a number of public inquires and his practices have won numerous Civic Trust, Landscape and other awards. He was a Design Review Panel Member for the Design Council/CABE for over a decade and still sits on the DRPs of Merton and Richmond.

Colin Moore is a Landscape Architect and Urban Designer who has recently retired having worked in the landscape industry for 50 years.  He was an associate of John Kelsey Associates for 6 years and then senior partner of Moore Piet + Brookes (MP+B) for 20 years before becoming an independent landscape consultant.  Colin is well known to many landscape architects for his 35 years teaching for the final professional exam and his expertise in construction and maintenance contracts and the CDM Regulations. He is chair of the JCLI Contracts Forum and secretary of FOLAR.

Whiteknights: from private landscape park to university campus

The expansion of British Universities in the post war period fuelled the demand for new sites, especially for campus universities. For the University of Reading ‘the acquisition of Whiteknights was the most important single event in the history of the University.’ Much time and energy has been put into the maintenance of the park. The question remains as to how successfully the historic landscape, dating back to the 18th century, has been preserved in the face of the various demands made upon it. Indeed the survival of the park, a mile from the centre of Reading, is a story in itself given that at various times it was widely regarded as one of the most valuable sites in southern England and ‘ripe for development’.

Dr Phillada Ballard is a historical consultant specialising in buildings, landscapes and gardens. Former curator at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, she has had a long involvement with the restoration of Joseph Chamberlain’s Highbury estate in Birmingham. She has written several books on landscapes, gardens and buildings of Birmingham. She lives in Reading and her interest in suburban landscapes led her to research the Whiteknights estate.

Based on sites and projects in and around Reading, FOLAR presents a series of lunchtime talks at the MERL in which different landscape types are explored in terms of how and why land-use and landscape decisions are made, and by whom. Actions taken invariably have long term consequences on places and people. How can land be valued, planned and managed to better reflect and accommodate the needs and involvement of local people? What sort of positive future landscapes will respond effectively to the complexities of climate change and biodiversity? Who is really caring for the landscape? There are no simple answers but we hope these talks, presented by a professor of architecture, a researcher in geography and environmental science, a landscape historian and two landscape architects, will open up good debate.

FOLAR 2021 Symposium

The 1951 Festival of Britain was a national celebration of Britain's achievements and recovery following the Second World War, and was timed to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1851 Great Exhibition. In many ways this was also a coming of age for the British landscape architecture profession.

On the 70th anniversary of the Festival, the FOLAR Symposium 2021 marks the achievements of this young profession and its role in celebrating post war Britain.

This symposium accompanies the Museum of English Rural Life's online exhibition '51 Voices', an exploration and celebration of 51 Objects which reflect the ideas and products of 1951, the year the museum was established. The objects include items from the Festival of Britain's Country Pavilion, such as Michael O’Connor’s wonderful wall hanging celebrating the agriculture of Britain.

Talks cover

• the organisation and precedents for the 1951 festival: talk by Dr Harriet Atkinson

• the South Bank exhibition where (Sir) Peter Shepheard designed the public area downstream of Hungerford Bridge and Peter Youngman designed the upstream areas. Individual gardens were designed by Frank Clark and Maria Teresa Parpagliolo Shephard: talk by Dr Alan Powers

• the Festival Gardens at Battersea Park where Russell Page was landscape architect for parts of. these gardens: talk by Helen Brown

• and the Living Architecture exhibition on the Lansbury Estate, in blitz devastated Poplar, (Sir) Frederick Gibberd, architect and landscape architect designed the Chrisp Street Market and both Geoffrey Jellicoe and Peter Shepheard designed housing and Judith Ledeboer designed the Old People’s Home: by Camilla Beresford..

IMAGE View of the South Bank Festival Gardens by Eric Fraser, copyright The National Archives, WORK 25/64/B1/SB-Gen/24