Christopher Gray, director at SLR Consulting, tells ADF how he has nutured the importance of landscape-led masterplanning in his carreer, and why resilient green infrastructure including sensitive SuDS has to sit at the heart of future development.
What made you want to become an architect?
My first degree was in landscape architecture and after graduation I worked as a landscape architect at OLIN in Philadelphia. This was an inspirational practice led by dual-qualified staff who were both landscape architects and architects.
Seeing how their unique backgrounds positively shaped the designs inspired me to return to university to study architecture. Being dual-qualified gives me a unique skillset that allows me to approach projects with a greater emphasis on sustainable design.
What do you like most about it now?
No two days are the same, and I get to work across the country, learning about the best ways to approach design and development that consider where the project is based. Through exploring sites, I am better able to understand potential developments and see how they work, which helps me to design unique places for people to live, work, play and study.
I enjoy the collaborative aspect of the job which means listening and working with not just colleagues and clients but the communities who are being affected by changes, understanding their concerns and explaining what we are doing to address them. It is incredibly rewarding to walk through new places that I have helped design, where people enjoy living and have clearly taken ownership of their surroundings.
What is currently your biggest challenge in trying to introduce good quality landscape into urban masterplans?
As a practice, we have taken a landscape-led approach for years, however it was the lockdowns of the pandemic that made people appreciate how important immediately accessible landscape and natural green space can be for their personal wellbeing. This elevated general perception and the increasing value the public places on landscape have meant it has become easier to make the case for good quality landscape in masterplans.
We have clients who have calculated the benefit and see the evidence in the form of higher sales value across sites where high-quality landscape is in place early and consistently.
However, this is not the case across the industry. Challenges come from increasing demand for space to accommodate sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) requirements and biodiversity enhancements, which means that it is critical that these landscape spaces are multi-functional and recognised as critical elements of resilient green and blue infrastructure.
Do you manage to include attractive SuDS in urban schemes, despite the fragmented picture on risk?
Rather than a lack of regulation, it is the patchwork of requirements and policies from adopting authorities, environmental agencies and client bodies – particularly in relation to their corporate approach to risk – that I feel must be addressed on a site-by-site basis.
The most enlightened agencies recognise SuDS have an interpretive role to play in educating the public on natural processes. We design SuDS that are attractive, biodiverse habitats with seasonal interest and which closely mimic natural drainage systems.
Conversely, as a practice we are sometimes forced down the route of ‘bomb crater’ fenced off basins in projects; benefitting no one, and which – quite rightly – the public hate. National policy to encourage the former and prevent the latter could be transformational for how we approach schemes.
How can a landscape-led approach deliver long-term social value and community ownership in major regeneration and new settlements?
A landscape-led approach puts multifunctional green and blue infrastructure at the heart of regeneration and new settlements, supporting health, activity, social connection and everyday contact with nature, rather than simply providing sprawl and leftover open space.
Long-term social value comes from inclusive, accessible places and from giving communities real opportunities to shape and care for them, such as through community gardens and shared spaces that build a sense of pride and belonging.
At Auldcathie District Park in Winchburgh, flexibility in the design allowed residents’ ambition to shape the park, leading to a community-led cricket club, a popular parkrun route and a community garden, demonstrating how landscape can enable social infrastructure to grow organically.
How informed are clients on the benefits of landscape-led design?
Clients are increasingly aware of the value of a landscape-led approach and more willing to involve specialist consultants, including ecologists, early. This allows landscape architects to contribute strategically rather than reactively, as architects and engineers alone cannot resolve the environmental and placemaking challenges of large schemes. Taking a multidisciplinary approach from the outset produces more robust outcomes.
Early engagement is key to applying the mitigation hierarchy for biodiversity risks. Knowing what exists on a site and what must be protected allows development to work with the assets, ensuring biodiversity requirements are met and meaningful uplift achieved. Delaying this makes delivering biodiversity net gain very difficult.
Policy has increased awareness, and while biodiversity net gain has had some unintended consequences, it has encouraged more careful consideration of landscape and ecology, including retention and integration of significant trees and habitats. While some clients still focus more on built form and marketing, understanding is growing that successful development is about more than clearing a site and starting afresh.
What is your favourite project you’ve been involved in?
One of my earliest projects was in a junior role designing the landscape around the Washington Monument in the US capital, which remains the highest profile project of my career. However, my favourite project is the masterplan and delivery of the new settlement of Kingsgrove on the edge of Wantage for St Modwen. It’s a project that I have been involved with since 2012, helping to secure an initial allocation, outline consent and then subsequent design coding and reserved matters applications for delivery.
Regularly walking the site over the years, I’ve been able to see our designs come to life, creating a place with generous public open spaces, new woodland and parks and civic spaces for the emerging community to adopt and make their own. I’ve witnessed the new primary school grow by a new class year by year, with the first class of pupils always being the oldest in the school but able to show younger new starts around their new school. Most recently the community orchard and allotments are nearly complete and I’m looking forward to returning to see the first crops.
Do you believe national housebuilding targets are wrong-headed?
We have been underdelivering on building homes for so long that I believe we must continue to set goals, if only to reinforce and remind people of the scale of the housing need. Although the goals might seem daunting, and some say impossible, that need isn’t going away and as a society we need to recognise and prioritise delivery. Without goals, we have nothing to aim for and it would be too easy to become complacent and lose momentum.
How do you see architects’ roles evolving in the next few years?
We are in a period of massive disruption and change that is driven in part by two related threads that will directly affect the roles of architects in the next few years. The first is climate change and the critical need to always design with environmental impact, carbon and energy in mind. There is a lot of noise about the adoption of ‘regenerative’ processes but frankly these are rarely to do with built form and more about processes, systems and the natural environment and best led by disciplines other than architecture. I think the result will be landscape architects and other environmental disciplines will lead projects more frequently rather than architects, as has often been the case.
The second is the influence of AI on every aspect of our lives. Too few people are critically thinking about how AI will change things and that includes architects, who will be directly affected by AI tools as they evolve and improve, making whole processes obsolete while simultaneously making human review and oversight even more important. Architects will have to embrace these tools and a new way of working or face becoming sidelined by more nimble professions that can become more influential.