LEARNING CURVE
HELEN KIRK
learning curve
By Helen Kirk, BD Landscape Architects
s a practice, we work on
a variety of project types
and sizes and during the
seven years I have been
part of BD, I have worked on a
number of projects that have been
constructed. Projects at King’s
Cross, including the Pond Club,
a natural swimming pool that
was in place for two years and
was overall winner for Design for
Temporary Landscape at the 2017
LI Awards; London South Bank
University; various phases of
work at City of London Freemen’s
School. I am currently working
on a housing development and
community centre for Pocket
Living in Haringey that is on site.
Each project, regardless of size,
brings about new challenges that I
continue to learn from and always
look to share experience and
knowledge with my colleagues.
As Landscape Architects,
sometimes we have to learn to
target areas of a design as part
of value engineering in order to
retain other elements that provide
the overall quality we are looking
for, that the site and the end users
deserve. If we have to make a cost
saving, ensuring we are targeting
the right areas, making a calcu-
lated decision by retaining a ma-
terial to an area that may be a lot
more noticeable than if we change
a material to a ‘back of house’
area where it is not as detrimental
to the project.
The biggest challenge was not
so much with this project itself,
because problems do arise and
you resolve them but more so jug-
gling multiple projects especially
if more than one is on site and a
response is needed very quickly in
A
HELEN KIRK
order to ensure there is not a de-
lay to the contract - that is when it
is most challenging. I personally
find after work is when I need to
get outside and do some exercise
which certainly helps. On this
project there were a couple of un-
foreseen below ground issues that
transpired on site but they were
overcome by looking at the design
and making some slight amend-
ments working in collaboration
with the architect, engineers and
the contractor to resolve them.
What was pleasing was that
those elements really took on the
character of the landscape and did
not detract from the project and
looked as though they were part of
the original design.
We enjoy using natural stone
(local where possible) for some
elements of a project for durabil-
ity and where we are looking for a
high quality finish of Beecroft we
worked with Hardscape ‘Artscape’
to the access steps at the main
entrance to a building and for the
inground logos to accessible park-
ing bays.
The Corten steel edging worked
very well within this project,
from a practical way to lift the
level of the planting beds above
the tree root protection area
where required and aestheti-
cally, the warm colour it provides
when fully weathered has helped
provide a cohesive colour scheme
complementing both the tone of
the paving and the colour palette
of the building materials.
November 2018 | Landscape Insight
25