HargreavesJones

I think that HargreavesJones has created many innovative and inspirational designs that have influenced millions.

The home page is bright, the changing slides of their work shows the vast range of projects they have completed and how successful they have been. Their website is inviting and easy to navigate, and straight away shows the scale and type of work they do, its large scale and most commonly public realm work.

There projects are all so different and characterised to place specific detail, I found so much inspiration within there projects. There is manipulation of topography and the creation of rolling hills on what once was such a flat landscape brings interest and an informal feel to their designs. Most of their projects have a flow throughout the site, the paths have this natural form that sweeps through joining planters that then meander through carefully sculped hills. This is something that really inspires me as a Landscape architect, designs that fit so seamlessly into nature. They have created individual spaces so well within a whole scheme that lead you through their design, telling a story, and creating different emotional responses.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, United Kingdom was one of their designs that really impacted me. Being a river side design, they really used it to their advantage, you can see the flow through the form of their design. I was really inspired by the change in topography, and how this landscape felt layered. I loved the refugee points, under trees, on the side of paths surrounded by beautiful perennials and I loved the large green open spaces that gave the park the flexibility that it needed. I thought it was creative that along the river, they had brought water into the space, making separate spaces for habitats to flourish, and people could reconnect with water and nature. I also through the benches that came out the side of the banks created good use of space, and made people want to sit there due to feeling protection, from the mounds.  

 Examples from Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: 

Naturalise water feature, simple, peaceful, effective. 

Rolling hills, split up by trees, seating and pathways. 

                                                       

Park patter from above, following the flow of the river. 

relationships between the green open grass land, the rive, the seating and the banked hills. 

“a belief in the power of expressive and responsive design to create enduring landscapes for communities, institutions, and individuals.” http://www.hargreaves.com/

This was, and how they described their designs and themselves as a practice. I thought it was fitting. They have a very expressive design process, they always seem to be creating ground-breaking and very interesting places, the patterns, the pathways and the features are always different. But place specific and that’s why I think their designs work so well. There have been many elements of their designs that I would love to take forward into my own, and I think just become a bit more explorative and expressive when designing places, try to aim to get that ‘oh wow’ response. Do different things, do crazy designs, play with topography and vantage points and just try to create landscapes with layers and depths to them.