PROFILES

LDA Design

LDA Design is an independent consultancy of urban designers, landscape architects and planners working together to connect people and place through landscape. Click on the image above to access LDA Design's web site.

For 40 years, LDA says, it has held true to a single mission, to create great places and shape the world around us for the better. The firm’s origins lie in landscape architecture and this it feels strengthens its offer.

The company believes that master-planning is a social endeavour. It states that if master-planning is to succeed in its social purpose, it needs the power of synthesis that landscape brings. When the firm embarks on a masterplan, it says, Immanuel Kant’s rules for happiness ring loudly: ‘Something to do, someone to love, something to hope for’. It wants the places it helps to create to be enterprising and full of hope and life.

‘A landscape led approach to master-planning creates specific kinds of value. It produces welcoming civil spaces that draw on the history of a place. It best places us to work with local people to tackle some of the most pressing issues they face, addressing severance and lack of opportunity, as well as the causes of loneliness, obesity, poor air quality and anti-social behaviour’, says LDA Design.

‘What makes our approach to master-planning distinctive is how we combine a creative, landscape-led approach to spatial planning with a sound strategy for the making of place, underpinned by well grounded development economics. For LDA Design, landscape-led not only secures exceptional place quality but delivers land than can be serviced efficiently, released in tranches that amount to a sensible sequence of place making, minimises major grey infrastructure costs and maximises the value that can be reinvested in communities’ comments the firm.

In Exeter, LDA Design is working to create the UK’s most liveable city through a bold new strategy associated with a major housing delivery programme. The strategy emphasises Exeter’s qualities and demonstrates how these will attract investment as the city grows.

At Welbourne in Hampshire, the firm is master-planning one of the first of the new wave of 21st century garden communities to ensure it is an enterprising community, with workspaces, health hubs and community spaces.

Waterbeach New Town, on the edge of the fens in Cambridgeshire will be the first for UK housing at scale. Here in the residential ‘steads’, streets will be largely car free, with the feel of intimate green linear parks with space for communal activities.

The Deaf Academy - proposed atrium on new site at Exmouth (Stride Teglown Architects)

Stride Treglown

Stride Treglown is an employee-owned architectural practice of over 300 people. The practice was started in 1953 by two architects, Ray Stride and Gerry Treglown. Ray was a stickler for detail, buildability and process, while Gerry was a socially adept, creative powerhouse.

The practice focuses on the needs of the clients and the people that use our projects, creating inspiring, sustainable spaces that genuinely work. It puts health and wellbeing first and was the first UK organisation to achieve excellence in the Workplace Wellbeing Charter.

The firm says it loves exploring new ideas and are open to proposals from consultants, clients, research organisations and universities about new initiatives. It currently has a focus on five main threads: evidence-based BIM, sustainability, design research, usability and collaboration.

It states that its architecture is not about pre-determined style or fashion; it strives to create spaces and places that people love to use. Buildings are designed to fit comfortably in their surroundings, but also inspire and excite. Simple solutions are sought, but achieve an elegance derived from thorough analysis and good ideas.

The practice explores innovative construction techniques to improve build quality and performance but carefully manage our clients’ risk. It designs pragmatically to optimise sustainability.

The image above shows the proposed atrium for the new £10 million Deaf Academy in Exmouth, Devon, which will be a focal space for the academy providing a lively and engaging space for children from different classes to meet, dine and learn. The space is also part of the important natural lighting and ventilation strategy.

Click on the picture/logo above to access the practice web site.

Waterbeach new town, Cambridgeshire (Image from Urban & Civic)

David Lock Associates

David Lock Associates offer a comprehensive service to build strategies and secure consents for all types of development with services tailored to the needs of both the private and public sectors.

The firm has been working for Milton Keynes Council, Aylesbury Vale District Council and South Northamptonshire Council on the Oxford MK Cambridge Arc (O2C) as lead planners and master-planners exploring spatial growth opportunities in the O2C area.

The initial commission undertaken was as part of MK Futures 2050 Visioning, setting an aspiration for Milton Keynes to grow to a population of over 400,000. The practice also examined spatial options for coordinated well planned and integrated growth maximising economic and physical benefits arising from committed strategic infrastructure projects including East West Rail and the Oxford to Cambridge Expressway.

Working with specialist consultants, DLA is leading and shaping the long-term policy framework for the central part of the O2C Arc which will enable the delivery of transformational growth and regeneration set out in the 2050 Vision. Wider than a planning policy document, the Growth Study will shape the spatial aspects of successive development plans, strategic priorities, corporate policies and direction of travel.

The firm has been working on a number of proposed new towns, and garden communities. The image is from Urban & Civic's development of the Waterbeach barracks site which will help to address the shortage of housing in the Cambridge region.

Please click on the image above to link through to the firm’s web site.