Landscape architecture

Landscape architecture can also function as a design corrective, providing nature-based solutions to day-to-day issues. Our team develops landscape strategies and frameworks at city or district level to address urban challenges such as car use, climate resilience, air pollution, urban heat islands, encouraging economic activity while improving people’s connection with nature and access to active travel.

Inclusive landscape design

The way our towns and cities are planned or developed, often reflects historic injustices to less powerful or privileged groups – whether by race, religion, wealth or any other aspect. Landscape architecture can play a powerful role as we address these issues, reconnecting separated communities, providing shared green spaces that can be enjoyed by all groups, ages and abilities or active travel options like bike networks that bring groups back into a shared environment.

Every context has its own story and its own ambitions. Our work begins by engaging with community bodies, indigenous groups, specialists and local experts to consider the experiences and desired outcomes of different cultures, races and gender identities. We always aim to fully understand the issues across many user groups, from accessibility to perceptions of safety. We co-create places that improve people’s quality of life for the long-term.

These projects provide an opportunity to go far beyond standard mitigation practices and enhance the wider landscape’s aesthetic, cultural and ecological condition for generations to come.

For transport schemes, landscape architecture helps to establish new services and infrastructure’s connection to the existing fabric of a place, while adding natural appeal and flood resilience to each site. On large urban development projects, landscape architecture provides opportunities to improve the community experience at scale, providing new areas for activity, leisure and healthy travel.

We always embed regenerative land management and nature-based solutions to restore habitats, reverse species loss and design in resilience to extreme climate change impacts, such as intense heat or flooding. 

Landscape architecture is central to how we achieve healthier communities, sustainable development and economic growth, with climate positivity acting as a guiding principle throughout each project or scheme.

Whether it’s developing urban meadows, regenerating parkland or simply bringing more trees into the streetscape, nature-based design solutions are often the most affordable and scalable way to restore, regenerate and enhance an environment. And they’re always the lowest emission solution to build an area or asset’s resilience to climate change. 

Emission reduction and resilience

We help our clients manage and mitigate the carbon impacts of their landscape projects by reducing carbon footprints and increasing sequestration in the places we design. We can protect and expand natural assets to deliver benefits to city developments. From planting urban forests, pedestrianising whole districts, creating new blue-green corridors and wetlands to large scale passive cooling of surfaces and buildings and integrated ‘green, blue and grey’ water management. Integrating nature in every urban system delivers wider ecosystem benefits. These range from improved pollination and flood control to improved biodiversity.

Our expertise spans natural capital assessments, support with green finance and nature governance, alongside strategic planning and nature design to shift projects towards outcomes that reverse nature degradation. From regenerative land management to green buildings, we integrate nature-based solutions as a fundamental element in the planning, design and ongoing delivery and stewardship of proposed schemes.

Find out more about our work on Keyn Glas

Find out more about our nature-based solutions expertise

Landscape planning is an area of expertise that is concerned with planning for the most productive and efficient use of land, responding to context and using thorough assessment to inform design solutions.

Our landscape planning and strategy experts use our specialist research and analysis skills to inform and influence designs which respond positively to place and connect people with nature. This robust assessment work supports all project stages and scales, from pre-application consultation for site specific appraisals to local plan evidence base studies and strategies.

We help secure consent for a range of technically challenging projects, including major infrastructure schemes in protected landscapes through the DCO (development consent) process. This requires intensive stakeholder engagement and close collaboration with planning, environmental and design disciplines. We regularly defend our work through public inquiries, acting as expert witness on landscape and visual matters.