B. Cannon Ivers Harvard Graduate School of Design&LDA Design, UK

LDA Design | Bartlett | Harvard GSD

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‘Ideas Without a Home’

With design competitions, there always needs to be a winner. When we’re not selected, it stings but the creative output still has value and becomes an ‘idea without a home’.

Here’s a selection of images from our submission for Portugal Street that runs through the heart of the LSE campus, severing the cohesiveness of the campus and impacting the experience of the public realm.

Spina viridis, inspired by the universal language of botanical Latin that provides the means by which the natural world is classified. Spina meaning spine, and viridis meaning green or flourishing, embodying concepts of growth, vitality, and renewal. Our approach is centred on co-design and radical empathy to create a beautiful and biodiverse living spine along Portugal Street inspired by the unique urban setting of LSE and its ethos as a community of people and ideas founded to know the cause of things for the betterment of society. The transformation of Portugal Street is an exciting opportunity to consider people as an integral part of a unique campus ecosystem, how interests of human and multi-species worlds intersect and what the symbiotic benefits are when people and cities become an integral part of nature, not separate from it.

Overall illustration by George Allen, eye level drawings by Samantha Charles that have been converted to designed night views by Melissa Byer at Michael Grubb Studio.

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Study of ‘cloud bridges’ over an existing watercourse to create areas to gather and dwell not just pass through. Section perspective by the talented Marco Strizzolo

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Design competition for a new design and engineering building at Plymouth University.

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An illustration for the design of a family of ‘tree houses’ set within an immersive landscape, which has received planning consent. Not a bad place to wake up to.

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The Camden Highline was a competition with over 80 entries. It would have been a fun one to deliver and good to Field Operations as they work to make it a reality.

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Cambridge Market Square joins the Ideas Without a Home thread. Because of the daily market, this significant urban square is not able to provide a variety of events, installations and cultural celebrations throughout the year. In an effort to create more than a market square, we devised a system of nested market stalls that could dock on the edges of the square to allow the staging of the square with a multitude of events and greater visibility of the architecture that edges the space.

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Cambridge Market Square joins the Ideas Without a Home thread. Because of the daily market, this significant urban square is not able to provide a variety of events, installations and cultural celebrations throughout the year. In an effort to create more than a market square, we devised a system of nested market stalls that could dock on the edges of the square to allow the staging of the square with a multitude of events and greater visibility of the architecture that edges the space.

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The Sculptural Seats at #strandaldwych consist of:

595 cnc’d panels of #accoya #accoyawood

135 bespoke galvanised steel frames

2872 separate parts

10mm tolerance over 100m bench after 3d scanning the site.

2017 days of labour

I designed these sculptural seats and worked with Millimetre through the fabrication process.

Drone photos by Glasshooper

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This is our competition entry for London Metropolitan University for a new campus common next to Daniel Libeskind’s iconic building.

The design consisted of a central flexible area with peeled edges for seating and sculpted central steps to provide informal perch edges. The perimetre of the ‘common’ provides an intimate garden, lounging lawns, a shade garden and a plinth for students to exhibit their work.

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A tessellating paving system captures fountain mist as well as rain water to create a reflective surface inspired by the #giantscauseway and the #gherkinbuilding, bringing natural light into a space in front of a charming church overshadowed by towering skyscrapers.

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The proposition created stronger connections with the Middle Mill River, introduced a civic square in place of a car park and provided a maker space for students to explore their own creative pursuits.

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The Dover Esplanade competition proposal linked the esplanade to the beach with an elegant ramp sequence that also created seating edges. The ‘White Sands of Dover’ provided pools of sand cut into timber decking. Vera Lynn’s Blue Birds of Dover were made visible via kinetic light sculptures from Jason Bruges Studio and the Poets Pier picked up on key literary contributions that were inspired by the place where the sea meets the land. This was an enjoyable design process and a hard loss, one of those that sticks with you.

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Design competition for Jubilee Gardens, London. Jubilee Gardens, developed as a system for expanding and contracting programmes. We also explored cultural overlays and a changing landscape that included and urban beach, a cactus garden for Cinco de Mayo and vibrant lighting projections on dark raining days. Imagine lights that would change by texting them.

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A competition for a pavilion and water sports centre in Colwyn Bay with DRMM Architects and Jason Bruges Studio that tucked the building into a linear landscape system of pedestrian ‘slipways’ that morphed to create areas of seating and planting. #ideaswithoutahome #postaday #landscapearchitecture #landarch #publicrealm

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London in Bloom! 🌱 🌳 🌱

#strandaldwych picked up a gold award🏆at the 57th LONDON IN BLOOM awards, with a ceremony held at Royal Horticultural Society Wisley. It’s meaningful because it was at the extraordinary world of horticulture that is RHS Wisley that I observed and learned how plants fit together and change through the seasons.

This award is a remarkable recognition considering the Strand was 4 lanes of polluting cars with nothing but tarmac 3 short years ago. The transformational scheme introduced 1,750m2 of biodiverse planting consisting of:

—1,025 shrubs

—8,366 herbaceous plants

—37,395 bulbs

—244 ferns

—3,739 grasses

—170 square metres of turf

It also introduced 44 trees.

The award looks for impact and #strandaldwych is gone from a place to pass through to a place to pass time.

[cannonivers-realm]

London in Bloom! 🌱 🌳 🌱

#strandaldwych picked up a gold award🏆at the 57th LONDON IN BLOOM awards, with a ceremony held at Royal Horticultural Society Wisley. It’s meaningful because it was at the extraordinary world of horticulture that is RHS Wisley that I observed and learned how plants fit together and change through the seasons.

This award is a remarkable recognition considering the Strand was 4 lanes of polluting cars with nothing but tarmac 3 short years ago. The transformational scheme introduced 1,750m2 of biodiverse planting consisting of:

—1,025 shrubs

—8,366 herbaceous plants

—37,395 bulbs

—244 ferns

—3,739 grasses

—170 square metres of turf

It also introduced 44 trees.

The award looks for impact and #strandaldwych is gone from a place to pass through to a place to pass time.

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#strandaldwych sculptural seats. Coming soon.