Planning for Wildlife

Some useful pointers for encouraging wildlife in your designs.



Dael Warrell

High Line Urban Park

Inspired by Zac's post I found this video of James Corner talking about the High Line Project.

And if you find that interesting you may want to sit back and watch this in depth presentation which goes into much more technical detail, and is a lot higher quality. V. Interesting!

The High Line pre-park. Photo from Flickr by Wallyg

Information is Beautiful

I went to a DO STUFF event last night. There was some very provocative discussion and presentations under the title 'sustainability v progress'. One of the speakers [Paul Iddon at Kernel] used some graphics from a wonderful website: information is beautiful is produced by David McCandless whose cites one of his passions as 'visualizing information – facts, data, ideas, subjects, issues, statistics, questions – all with the minimum of words'. 


It's well worth having a good look around - dare I hope that MMU landscape architecture students might produce analysis in such a sophisticated and dandy way?

Whilst having a good delve around on that site I stumbled across what I'm sure is destined to become my latest nerdy informational motherlode, Google Insights. It allows anyone with web access to 'compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.' The JOY. 


A few seconds later and I can confirm that people google socks for christmas: the peak each year is just a little before the 25th of December. It's enough to warm the cockles of one's very toes. And on a more serious note, this could be an interesting addition to all kinds of projects. What do you think?

Malmo Western Harbour (Vaestra Hamnen)


The ecological district was built for a housing exhibition in 2001 it is part of the first phase in an ongoing plan to brand Malmo as a pioneering city in sustainable living. It's aim is to lead the way in environmental adaptation and social sustainability. It was transformed from a former industrial site into a trend-setting ecological district.

The Turning Torso is an iconic piece of architecture which acts as a magnet for initial attraction drawing people to the district.

Ecological sustainability - The architecture is a mix of styles as different firms were employed onto the project. Many people criticised this and felt that it caused a lack of order and felt no connecting link. I felt that this actually strengthened the landscape design, as a running theme of water became the strongest linking element.  However, whatever the opinion of the facades it is the underlying principles that  are most interesting. The buildings are competing against one another to be the pioneer of the newest and greenest technology. All the energy used in the area is produced locally. Renewable forms of energy are used, such as wind and solar power and ground and seawater heat extraction.

The housing opens out to the sea front revealing a fantastic view over to copenhagen. However, my criticism would be that the housing is designed in such a way that the tallest buildings are on the sea front, in the aim to create pockets of shelter within the housing complex. This is successful but obviously disastrous if you would like to sit on the sea front where now a vortex of wind is created and on a cold wet day can be rather uncomfortable. 

Grey-water and surface run-off was collected and moved through a system of open reed beds. This feature ran through the district linking the spaces together in a very attractive and innovative way. 


Laura Parsons