An EDLA Study Series | Part 1: Shared Edges

Earlier this year, the EDLA team travelled to Amsterdam and The Hague for a few days of exploring, learning and experiencing a different approach to landscape architecture.

Every few years, we make time to visit a European city together. These trips are an important part of our practice culture, providing an opportunity to spend time as a team, experience different places and explore how other countries approach many of the design challenges we encounter in our own work.

The Netherlands offered plenty to consider, particularly in its approach to green infrastructure, sustainable movement, public space, urban ecology and the relationship between people and landscape.

Rather than simply documenting the places we visited, we asked each member of the team to reflect on something that particularly interested or challenged them, and consider what lessons might be relevant to landscape architecture in the UK.

The result is a series of thought pieces, each exploring a different aspect of Dutch landscape design, from coastal resilience and sustainable drainage to naturalistic planting, play and the spaces between homes.

Over the coming days, we’ll be sharing these individual perspectives, beginning with Shared Edges by Donald Roberts FLI, exploring how the design of boundaries between private and communal space can influence the social life of a neighbourhood.

We hope the series offers some useful observations and encourages further discussion about the way we design and manage our landscapes.

Landscape Perspectives | Amsterdam & The Hague | An EDLA study series | Part 1: Shared Edges