Madagascar Play at Chester Zoo

Budget: £0.5m

Project Team: BCA Landscape, Handspring Design, Lanes Landscape, Timber Play

Having fun is no trivial pursuit. In fact, it’s crucial to our mental health and happiness. The project expands the variety and type of play offer that was previously in the zoo and encourages higher forms of imaginary and creative social play within a series of exciting and flexible spaces.

Through creative innovation and careful design consideration it combines and balances all the latest thinking and research in the realms of the psychology of play and communication friendly spaces, with the needs of the zoo and its staff and a fascinating and playful exploration of the wonderful island of Madagascar.

There are a number of key themes and objectives that run through the scheme, including :- the use of Natural materials and a need to create a deeper connection with nature, the creation of welcoming and innovative people niches – for kids, teenagers, adults, grandparents and families and a flexible landscape where children can manipulate their environment to suit their imagination.

“Decades of research has shown that play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social-emotional development at all ages. This is especially true of the purest form of play: the unstructured, self-motivated, imaginative, independent kind, where children initiate their own games and even invent their own rules.” – Can We Play? by David Elkind

The Voyage

Project Team: BCA Landscape, Smiling Wolf, Hardscape, Amey, Kings Construction

Awards: D&Ad 2018

This epic scaled stone seat over 50m long [160ft] – stretching the full length of the Cunard building – was opened by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Councillor Roz Gladden and the Captain of Queen Elizabeth, Inger Klein Olsen (first ever female captain of a Cunard ship).

The seat is inset with ‘The Voyage’ – a specially designed piece of artwork with beautiful and unique bronze illustrations and typography inspired by the fascinating history of Cunard.

It is the stunning centre-piece of the newly completed public realm that provides a high quality landscape setting befitting the Grade II* listed Cunard Building, one of Liverpool’s world famous three Graces. From Nova Scotia to New York and the Mauretania to the Queen Mary; ‘The Voyage’ explores a company who had an immeasurable impact on the city’s culture and its people.

“I remember her dazzling speed and the graceful way she would lean over into the zigzags to frustrate the undersea wolf packs.” – Paul Gallico writing about the Queen Mary during the second World War

A Record of Lancaster

Budget: £125,000

Project Team: BCA Landscape, Smiling Wolf, Placemarque

Awards: Landscape Institute Award 2015, The Planning & Placemaking Awards 2016

Set in a new stone ‘performance plinth’ in the City’s centre and a series of new way-finding monolith’s, ‘A Record of Lancaster’ celebrates the city’s beat; detailing nine narratives in bronze and stone from Lancaster’s past and present through an engaging visual time-line. The scheme creates high quality public spaces in which people want to linger, increasing dwell time to encourage commercial, social and cultural gains.

The concept also drove our visual approach. We treated the plinth like album cover art as stories became tracks, dates turned to running time and the top of the stone acted as a track listing. Each narrative was distilled into a series of bronze illustrations: ‘hidden treasures’; which depict moments in history which lead the viewer to find out more.

“They are not just functional but also excellent pieces of public art. I’ve been very pleased to see people stopping and using them regularly.” – Jerry North Chair of Lancaster Business Improvement District

Angel Field

Budget: £900,000

Project Team: BCA Landscape

Awards: Civic trust Award 2011, National Roses Design Award 2011, Landscape Institute Award 2011, RIBA Red Rose Project of the Year (Architecture and Landscape), RIBA Landscape Award (Winner)

Stories give form to the transience of existence. We express ourselves by telling stories in the form of dance, films and plays and verbally in song and conversation. The story is given form in the landscape as a walk through time referencing ecology and culture, Liverpool as a City and the story of Western Civilisation as a whole.

The journey through Angel Field begins with a reflective pool set within a copse of native trees – a symbolic wilderness representing the origins of life. Next, an apple orchard set amongst a wildflower meadow produces fruit and nectar to nourish the body. Topiary forms and yew hedges define a performance space where flowers put on a colourful show in beds formed by interlocking Fibonacci spirals; this is the garden of the mind.

Finally, between St. Francis Xavier church and the Cornerstone building, Angel Field [originally the name of a farm on the same site] has it’s own angel sculpture. The specially commissioned artwork forms a focal point at the end of an avenue of trees, inviting people to look up. This final space is dedicated to the spirit.

“The Creative Campus has been completed by this outstanding public space which links a series of otherwise disparate buildings across a serene and playful garden. It has been realised by an imaginative designer determined to deliver on the vision. Built to an exceptional standard of finish, it is a soft and welcome delight in an otherwise harsh urban setting. A place you will want to return to again and again.”

The Fairytale of Burscough Bridge

Budget: £1 Million

Project Team: BCA Landscape & Smiling Wolf

Awards: Landscape Institute Award 2008, RTPI Award 2008, West Lancashire Design Award 2009

A complete renewal of the public realm through this busy village, which sits astride the A59 between the Leeds to Liverpool canal and Southport to Wigan railway.

The Fairytale of Burscough Bridge celebrates modern creative life beyond the city; presenting the successful realisation of a contemporary design project within a rural context. It is a bold and adventurous scheme that enriches the sense of identity in the Lancashire village.

The scheme involved the creation of a series of new small interlinked squares and pedestrian routes (previously full of parked cars and clutter) – animated with bespoke furniture, paving, artworks, lighting, signage and a village clock. A collective notion of identity is a notoriously complex idea to pin down. Ultimately it is the little things that have meaning and these woven together form a greater picture.

“BCA Landscape is without doubt one of the most exciting landscape practices in Britain today… their designs work as allusive artworks with many shades of meaning, a reflection of the cultural complexity of a human settlement as old as Burscough Bridge.” – Tim Richardson – writer and landscape critic

Drift Park, Wales

Budget: £4.5 Million

Project Team: BCA Landscape & Broadbent Studios

Awards: Landscape Institute Award 2008, RTPI Award 2008, West Lancashire Design Award 2009

This multi award winning new seafront park was inspired by the meeting of coastal processes and the interventions used to control them and celebrates the fascinating heritage of Rhyl in the form of a ‘beachcombing’ artwork experience.

 “It was not architecture that was needed to regenerate the sea front: that could come later. They needed someone who knew how to make thoughtful marks on the land. It needed a sensibility to understand the forms of the sand and the fauna and flora of the seaside – a team who would drink in the knowledge of the local historians about this once remarkable sea-front, and engage businesses and politicians and local schoolchildren, so that all ages and communities could feel a sense of ownership. All this is included in BCA Landscape’s wonderful mark-making on new land forms at Rhyl’s new west promenade.” – Tom Leitener RSAW – Touchstone

Cockermouth Market Place

Budget: £1.2m

Project Team: BCA Landscape, Smiling Wolf

Awards: Landscape Institute Award 2009, Hard Landscape BALI Award 2009, NW Tourism Public Space Award (Shortlist 2009)

This Georgian Market Place in the ancient town of Cockermouth is re-enlivened with a high quality and pedestrian friendly approach.

Footpaths are widened, designated level crossing points, disabled parking and delivery bays are provided alongside existing trees. Artworks are incorporated into functional elements, bringing to light many details of Cockermouth’s past.

Each bollard, manhole cover, and some of the paving slabs tell local stories unearthed during extensive historical research, and conversations with local people. Regionally distinctive burgage-plot field patterns dictate how the paving is laid out. High-quality materials such as bronze, cast iron and natural stone reflect are used to enhance the historical setting of Market Place.

All the works have been developed sensitively within the context of the existing Conservation Area.

Face of Liverpool

Budget: £1m

Design Team: BCA Landscape, Broadbent Studio, Smiling Wolf

Awards: Best National Community Campaign 2006 – Presidents Grand Prix Award, NWDA Renew – Exemplar Project Status 2004

A fast-track mixed-use scheme at the gateway to Liverpool’s Central Business District. Part urban landscape, part public artwork, the £1.4m project includes ‘The Face of Liverpool’ – a wonderful installation that gave Liverpool residents the chance to have their portrait set into the scheme’s structure and help celebrate the city’s rich ethnic and cultural diversity.

The Landscape includes a twelve metre cor-ten wall and giant hardwood timber ring, alongside precast concrete walls with inlaid glass illustrations and stainless steel strips. Notions of global migration, sea-faring communications and trade-­links underpin the visual identity and graphic language of the scheme.

The morse code wall, by the way, spells out “Permission to come alongside”

“The Creative Campus has been completed by this outstanding public space which links a series of otherwise disparate buildings across a serene and playful garden. It has been realised by an imaginative designer determined to deliver on the vision. Built to an exceptional standard of finish, it is a soft and welcome delight in an otherwise harsh urban setting. A place you will want to return to again and again.” – RIBA Judge