FOLAR
Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Past Talks

Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Past Talks

Almost from the outset FOLAR has - with generous permission from our speakers - recorded virtually all the talks we have held at symposia and online.There are currently over 130 recordings available under Past Talks and Specials. The Past Talks section covers topics ranging from the Festival Pleasure Gardens at Battersea Park, Susan Jellicoe’s photographs, The Open Spaces Society, working on Byker in Newcastle with Ralph Erskine to landscape designs that promote human health and well-being.

There are a number of talks that focus on women landscape designers, from Fanny Wilkinson, Marjory Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Brenda Colvin, and Sylvia Crowe in Bristol, to Elisabeth Beazley, Diana Armstrong Bell and other contemporary landscape architects in the can…

Our speakers include past presidents of the Landscape Institute - Brian Clouston, Hal Moggridge, Tim Gale; landscape academics - Ed Bennis, Jan Woudstra, Alan Powers, Luca Csepely-Knorr, Catharine Ward Thompson; historians - Elain Harwood, John Boughton, Katrina Navikas; practitioners – Annie Coombs; Neil Chapman, Jennette Emery-Wallis, Paul Rabbitts, Ian Baggott,  young researchers – Joy Burgess, Sally Watson, Karen Fitzsimon and many more.

The Specials section includestalks celebrating the life and works of two of the Institute’s significant practitioners – Bran Clouston and Hal Moggridge;  and a series of twenty one talks on the C20 designed landscapes that were added to the Historic England register in 2021.

So how can anybody find anything in all these recordings?  The quickest way is to use the search box – type in a strong and simple key word linked with what you are searching for, eg play, Jellicoe, Sweden, and hopefully you will find something that is useful for you.

 

Designing Landscapes for the People - from the Clapham Omnibus to the Royal Parks

In this series of five online illustrated talks, the early 20C UK approach to city planning, civic design and parks and gardens is considered. Presentations encompass the formation of the UK professional body of landscape architects, the evolving Royal Parks, and the impact of corporate landscapes in the UK and modern examples in US in Silicon Valley. Through these lunchtime online talks hosted by The MERL, FOLAR explores a range of landscapes stretching over a period of 100 years from 1920’s – and some much longer - that have been designed and managed with people in mind.

The first talk by Michael Gilson profiles Richard Sudell. Sudell was a horticulturist and garden designer and although fundamentally involved in the founding of the UK professional body of landscape architects, one of his driving passion was to inform the ordinary man in the street. Through dozens of well-illustrated accessible books he demonstrated how to transform the new suburban plot into a functional and productive garden that would also bring delight and pleasure to its owner. A second talk by Tom Turner considers the influence of two Scotsmen - Patrick Geddes the biologist, environmentalist, town planner (and much more), and Ian McHarg who studied and taught landscape architecture in USA. Turner shows the influences of Geddes on McHarg and beyond in terms of landscape and ecological planning evident in 21st Century landscape urbanism. It was their published books, especially McHarg’s Design with Nature (1961) that became so influential of a distinctive method with ecology as the focus to interpret and grasp the complexities involved with regional planning and design.

The Royal Parks in London have been open to the public since 1800. Richard Flenley reviews how they have held a relatively steady course through the 20th Century while all around has witnessed dramatic changes in style, capacity, intensity, social and culture diversity. But masked beneath this “steady state” the Parks have frequently been battered and have had to adapt and adjust, often to resist, and to rise again to challenges and expectations. We see the challenges brought in by World War 1, the adaptations in shifting from Royal to wholly public patronage and the ever-threatening accumulation of layers, hard surfaces and artefacts. The 21st Century now brings its own changes of agenda with greater pressures on use, resourcing, funds and even brand. Ecology comes to the fore and horticulture perhaps retreats? Yet the Parks survive and England expects much.

Michael Brown’s Office … produced the best UK housing landscape designs of the 1960s and 70s. The outdoor space was well conceived, well designed, well built and well planted. The office was a hive of activity and remarkably prolific. Tom Turner. The Office developed a set of standard details which were refined from experience and modified for each project as necessary. They featured in almost all of the housing schemes as well as other projects. This established a practice ‘style’ characterised by brick slopes, brick steps and brick paving, often using a dark blue engineering brick, which made Michael schemes easily recognisable. Michael was accomplished in many other things which are characteristic of his style, for example meticulous earth shaping, planting and other space defining elements. However, most of the estates of that period were high rise and/or slab blocks with elevated walkways and many suffered from poor building design and construction, poor management and maintenance of buildings and landscape, as well as social problems. Some were demolished entirely, or partly, and redeveloped within a relatively short period. Others survived until recently when many have been partially demolished, redeveloped and the remaining buildings refurbished for predominantly private rather than social housing. Hence the majority of Michael’s council housing landscapes of that period have been lost. Some of Michael’s projects are in the Landscape Archive at The MERL and Colin Moore in his talk uses photographs and drawings from the archive as well as his own photographs to illustrate his talk. Colin worked for Michael in the early 1970 when the office had about 20 staff. He was involved on-site during the construction of Michael’s projects both before and during his university landscape education.

How are gardens and parks used in workplaces to inspire and support the people who work there? How beneficial are they to corporate identity and profit? Helena Chance talks about some of the gardens provided by tech companies such as Google and Apple, and will discuss how we can better understand them by looking at the past. She examines the landscapes of some of the British and American corporate giants of the 19th and 20th centuries such as Cadbury and the National Cash Register Company (NCR), the motives behind their making and the role of design and designers in their success. Helena’s talk will be based on her recently published book The Factory in a Garden. A History of Corporate Landscapes from the Industrial to the Digital Age (Manchester University Press).

Speakers Michael Gilson, Tom Turner, Richard Flenley, Colin Moore and Dr Helena Chance
April - June 2020 with The MERL

Videos

(in order, left to right)
Richard Sudell: suburban garden pioneer and forgotten man of landscape architecture by Michael Gilson
Patrick Geddes, Ian McHarg and landscape urbanism by Tom Turner
Succession and survival the Royal Parks in 100 years of change by Richard Flenley
Michael Brown landscapes: detailed delight by Colin Moore
Chocolate heaven to tech nirvana: corporate landscapes from Bournville to Google by Dr Helena Chance

Annabel Downs