5. A conversation about design

About this video

Diana Armstrong Bell, award-winning landscape designer, leads a discussion with a small panel of the UK's foremost landscape designers - Dominic Cole, Tom Stuart-Smith, and Kim Wilkie - reflecting on the design ideas and practice of Hal Moggridge and his influence and inspiration on others. Hal joins in at the end section and responds to questions about being an architect, when to lead as a landscape architect and how to exert control in the design process, his working relationship with Brenda Colvin and the influence on him of his artist mother.

Before this, Diana shares her own close analysis of Hal's writings and work, and from conversations with Hal and others, identifies his fundamental approach to designing change in the landscape. The very first step in his design process is as Diana describes it, allowing the landscape to invade all his senses. This is something that requires a stillness of mind, concentration, observation, being receptive and responsive, and then being able to translate these feelings into words and descriptions, and sketches perhaps, that capture the essence, to be referred to and recalled during the development of the project.

This is part of the discipline and rigour that others have talked about with reference to Hal's work. She looks at two examples of his work. As a 'reticent designer' at White Horse Hill, and the garden he created with his client at Upton Wold, with its series of garden rooms with views. She regards this as a masterclass in the use of trees and hedges, green architecture. Plus the surprise of Hal's earth sculpture. Can art influence landscape design? Hal's mother Helen Moggridge was an artist trained at the Slade and specialised in abstract art. Diana readily finds parallels in the layering approach in her paintings with the way landscape designers work. She describes Helen's lithographs as spatial studies of carefully placed solid blocks with movement lines between the two. Being close to her art at home as a young man, Hal must surely have absorbed this influence even subliminally? Diana observes how the minimal way in which his mother captures the essence of the South Downs landscape with few lines and colours on canvas is strikingly similar to how Hal captures the essence of place in the words she quoted from his book at the beginning of her talk.

Kim Wilkie identified three notable qualities of Hal's: his quiet incisive clarity, an ambition for championing causes, and generosity - for Kim this resulted in his leading the Thames Landscape Strategy. What he learnt from Hal was to stand back and look at the bigger picture first; to know that people instinctively understand landscape more easily than engaging with architecture; and finally to acknowledge that your idea - a completed landscape scheme - is just a starter, you put an idea in there and let it take off.

Dominic Cole recognised Hal as the godfather of all landscape architects, always around for gentle and severe advice. He identifies Hal's approach and attitude using quotes and illustrations from his book Slow Growth. Tom Stuart-Smith joined Colvin & Moggridge in 1984 for two years and recalls working in a benign environment in a garden setting, having lunch all together in the garden. Both he and Hal were opposed to a proposed bypass slicing through the landscape at Highclere, and after the weekend, Hal produced a skilfully crafted essay for Tom’s comment, including a memorable poetic passage describing the view from the rotunda to the lake having 'a rapid bosky foreground.' As a 25 year old left running a big project while Hal was a professor at Sheffield, was a careful delegation of responsibility to someone young and enthusiastic. This was incredibly empowering, such that when he left the following year to live in London, he had a sense of great possibility, a feeling of competence and can-do.

Speakers: Diana Armstrong Bell, Kim Wilkie, Dominic Cole and Tom Stuart-Smith.

About this series

Hal Moggridge was an obvious choice to continue FOLAR’s special series celebrating the life and works of UK’s renowned landscape architects. He has spent almost all of his working life in landscape architecture. Throughout this time, he has shared his knowledge and wisdom guiding multiple landscape focused organisations and professional bodies at international, national, and local levels. Hal has long provided a compass of wisdom, generosity, and diplomacy. He sees landscapes not only as cultural treasures, but also tools for reconciliation and embraces diversity as a strength. His courage, clarity, and humanistic vision continue to inspire. He continues working now as a consultant to his practice and as a volunteer advising on multiple committees, including FOLAR. Through a varied programme of speakers and topics we hoped to discover more about his work, ideas, principles, and also about him. How can such a quiet and modest man achieve so much? One of the most valuable objectives with FOLAR’s celebrations on special lives is being able to discuss, ask questions, see projects and learn and also share so much more about different aspects of peoples’ life and work, rather than guessing or making assumptions.

The archives of both Hal Moggridge and Brenda Colvin are at MERL, fully catalogued and open to all by appointment: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/brenda-colvin

The Landscape Institute collection at MERL: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/landscape-institute/

More information about FOLAR, and joining us https://www.folar.uk/