The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
In this second episode on the topic of landscape, we speak to Jo Gibbons of landscape practice J&L Gibbons, whose wide-ranging work encompasses both the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden in Hackney and Walpole Park in Ealing, the setting of John Soane’s Pitzhanger Manor.
Gibbons explains why she won’t go near a project unless she’s involved from the outset and why today, diversity of planting is essential for biosecurity. A frequent external examiner, Gibbons bemoans the fact that there are so few landscape architects, while in architecture schools, architects too often are designing landscapes with minimal landscape tuition.
In their news round-up, co-hosts Hattie Hartman and George Morgan unpick the furore surrounding the Serpentine Pavilion’s carbon negative claims and the alarming findings of the latest Committee on Climate Change report.
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About Johanna Gibbons
Jo Gibbons founded J&L Gibbons as an environmental architecture practice in 1986. Trained at Edinburgh College of Art under David Skinner, a disciple of Design with Nature author Ian McHarg, Jo frequently collaborates with leading architects such as AHMM, Stanton Williams, Carmody Groarke and muf architecture/art. To mark the practice’s 30th year, she founded Landscape Learn, an educational social enterprise. She champions community engagement as a way to build social cohesion and engage local people in looking after urban landscapes.
Show notes: Projects and resources mentioned in this episode
Counterspace’s ‘carbon-negative’ Serpentine Pavilion
Findings of Climate Change Committee’s Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk
Dalston Eastern Curve Garden (2007 onwards)
Source:Sarah Blee
Dalston Eastern Curve Garden
A collaboration with muf, the Dalston Curve reclaimed a derelict site in the interior of a block just off the busy Dalston Junction into a community garden with a café, allotments and an active cultural programme.
Walpole Park (2018) Pitzhanger Manor
Source: & L Gibbons
Pitzhanger Manor
The restoration of the heritage landscape as a setting for John Soane’s Pitzhanger Manor was complimented by programming of educational and cultural activities to involve local groups and schools to enliven the 12ha public park and bolster horticultural skills.
Garden House (2020)by Studio 54 Architecture
Garden House
Jo Gibbons’ own home in Highbury exhorts passersby to ‘PLANT TREES’
Knepp Castle Estate, West Sussex
Isabella Tree, Wilding
Scaffold Episode 7 with Johanna Gibbons
Urban Mind app
British Library archive, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire with Carmody Groarke
Conversations on Urban Forestry, book by J&L Gibbons' social enterprise Landscape Learn
Credits
Climate Champions is produced in association with ACAN, the Architects’ Climate Action Network
Podcast produced and edited by Concept Culture
Music: Edmilson do Pífano, Forró de dois Amigos. Interpretation: Felipe Tanaka e banda Balaio de Baião