The work of Landshaped is centred on the aesthetic power and beauty of nature.

This is not just in terms of visual imagery and shapes, as aesthetic concept also embraces the full sensory repertoire – ergo, all our senses and feelings. 

As such, nature is the focal point of everything the studio develops, draws and thinks. The aim is to make each design a hands-on exploration of the aesthetic power of nature.

Our approach

Our approach rests on the fundamental realisation that the ‘grown environment’ and the ‘built environment’ are complementary. The two are seemingly fundamentally incompatible, but together they form a holistic architecture. Nature is what is living and growing, and constitutes the very foundation of life. For us, master planning, urban spaces and landscape design must learn from nature’s processes. Nature constantly develops, grows and changes from one state into another. As such, the landscape or garden is never finished (or rather- a ‘finished’ landscape is a monument and no longer a part of nature).

Landshaped believes the act of designing is akin to telling a story about the spirit of the space, as opposed to simply describing or understanding the limitations and borders of an area. We design between these areas of understanding the ‘real’ reality and the imagination. Personal experience of landscapes and gardens creates individual memories and emotion. The objective of our design is not to show a hyper-realistic image of a space to be built, but an understanding of feeling, atmosphere and vision, culminating in drawing’s replete with symbols and notes that are an effective means of communication. 

Clarity

This intention is evident in clarity of thought and intent,  with our sketches having an inherent character that sets them apart. The process begins with loose, rather non-committal, gestures as a way of visually understanding a site and its contextual influences and overall potential. We utilise more of a visual note-taking approach to designing in which artistic masterpieces are not the desired output, a more informative dialogue between visual sketches and notation is the result; line drawings mixed with both text, numerical information and cartographic symbols.

Initial stages

Our initial sketches mostly take a diagrammatic form focussing on the most important, basic aspects of the design, without restraint, which often connects sketches of ideas with a brief and a particular atmosphere of place. Drawings are often enhanced by means of Photoshop or photographs are layered with illustration using a tablet, combining the charm of hand drawing with the efficiency of a computer. 

Our early sketches tend to stay alongside the design throughout the process – as a check, of sorts, for the overall direction. Designs are less about tracing barriers and more about feeling, sound and emotion, they are about atmosphere spirit and exploration. The next stage is the expression and fit with the landscape. The unfinished quality plays an important role on another level of the design process.

Flexible and adaptable

Large master plans often do not work anymore in the current economic climate, we prefer to design flexible and adaptable frameworks that focus on certain essential spaces and feelings as opposed to specific and rigid ‘complete’ designs that often lose the narrative of the design intent when value engineered. Early CAD drawings inevitably generate the aura of a fixed master plan that can be built immediately, even when you only want to communicate a suggestion or a possible outcome of a design process. By using many sketches, it is easier to convey the idea of one or more possible futures instead of a fixed one that can prevent the evolution of a design. The idea is to further develop ideas through subsequent sketches and workshops to provide more specific line work, which is ultimately translated into construction drawings.