Practice Profile - Whitelaw and Turkington

White law and Turkington

Services offered: Landscape design, Site planning, Landscape master planning, Urban design, Environmental assessment and Community enabling.

Approach taken to landscape and urban design

Whitelaw Turkington have earned a reputation both for innovative design, as well as the high quality of their hard landscaping elements. As well as design and masterplanning, they will steer landscape projects through to completion, including the management of construction. Two main threads have run through their work since Lindsey Whitelaw and Ian Turkington first began working together. The first is that they are a design led, rather than a horticulturally based practice. This has naturally led on to a focus on urban regeneration and the design of new public open spaces in London and other cities.The second thread is a focus on major commercial projects, which stems from their work with the London Docklands Development Cooperative in the 1990s. This led on to flagship projects for Barclaycard HQ and the redevelopment of the Guinness site at Park Royal in 1998. Whitelaw Turkington are currently working for Tesco on the landscaping of eight new Tesco stores which are part of major urban mixed use developments. The first to be built will be at Streatham.

Community participation

In the early 1990s, Whitelaw Turkington were employed by the Tower Hamlets Housing Action Trust to produce design guidelines and masterplanning for the development of four estates in Bow. This involved a considerable amount of consultation with the local community. The resulting guidelines were used throughout the landscaping of the estates. Shaping projects with the participation of the local communities has since remained a core aspect of their approach. Whitelaw Turkington were the landscape architects on the award winning The Village, Caterham development, designated a Building for Life project by Cabe. Community consultation took place over one weekend run by John Thompson and Partners. During the open house on Friday and Saturday, 1,000 local residents took part in workshops and discussion groups. The aim was to gather information on the issues local people felt strongly about and identify how the proposed development could benefit the community as a whole. As a result, the amount of proposed housing increased from 139 to over 450. Whitelaw Turkington worked closely with the masterplanning team and have been responsible for the execution and delivery of a high quality landscape.Whitelaw Turkington can run a proactive consultation package which can be delivered over half a day. Lindsey Whitelaw makes it absolutely clear they are “not designing by committee”. Rather, “we go to the community with a clean sheet to gather information and find out what people want”.

Sustainability

Sustainability is at the core of the practice’s approach to design and place making…from social sustainability with the involvement of communities at the outset to take ownership, to looking at ways that sustainable drainage, bio diverse roofs and materials are specified. Extensive green roofs are included in a new project currently underway at New Street Square in New Fetter Lane, London and sustainable urban drainage was introduced at the Generics HQ at Harston Mill, Cambridgeshire which was 20% cheaper than the traditional drainage system.

Here are the work force and a small describtion about each of them:


Lindsey Whitelaw - Managing Director

Lindsey is a founding partner of the practice. She has been responsible for the design and delivery of a number of recent high profile projects including First Central Park, a new urban space at the O2 dome and strategic public realm work in London. Ashford, and Stratford upon Avon.
Lindsey is particularly interested in the application of Scandinavian and Dutch models of integrated public realm in creating holistic planning strategies to urban development in the UK and Ireland.
She has also been responsible for developing the practice’s reputation in housing renewal and is a leading figure in promoting the pro-active involvement of local communities.

Ian Turkington – Chairmen

Ian has developed a particularly expertise in the planning and design of major public realm projects associated with town centre regeneration, involving office, retail and residential development.

Ian is particularly interested in the functions of public spaces and their role in enabling public life. Within the practice he leads an approach to the design of urban streets, squares, and parks which is predicted on the need to create spaces which contribute to the richness and vitality of our towns and cities.






Guy Denton – Director
Guy heads Whitelaw Turkington’s Leeds office which he established in 2001.
He has developed a wide portfolio of work throughout the North and Midlands, including major leisure, housing and retail development.
He has led our work in housing regeneration within the Market House Renewal, Safer Neighbourhoods and estate transfer programmes involving projects within the major regional urban and the practice work in Dublin for the Ballymum regeneration Agency which is one of Europe’s urban renewal projects.
Guy has been instrumental in developing our growing workload in the higher education sector. He lectures on landscape and public realm issues in educational and professional forums.Jury member for international design competitions.



Ricardo Ares – Director

Ricardo is a chartered landscape architect with a degree in civil engineering.
He assists in the management of the Wakefield office and the development of the practice throughout the region.
Plays a key role in the management of the CAD system in the practice.
Has extensive experience in the design and implementation of commercial and leisure developments, business parks, colleges and universities.
He has project managed some overseas leisure projects.
Ricardo is an expert in 3D presentation techniques and photo-realistic computer modelling.



Annie Lennox – Director

Annie is a landscape architect with over 12 years in practice.
Urban regeneration issues and the way in which communities can shape their environments are of particular interest to her.
She has completed some large scale social housing projects where she was involved in the consultation and participation with local residents.The work of the practice in its dealings with schools and healthcare projects is one of her remits where she seeks to create inclusive environments to meet the needs of children and others to try and create a landscape that creates a sense of well-being.




The remaining directors are: Lisa Toyne, Adrian Judd and Guy Protheroe.



Paul Robertson – Associate

Paul is qualified in both building construction and landscape architecture with experience in civil and structural engineering.
He is the practice’s technical mentor advising at all levels on construction technology, hard landscape detailing, specification writing and contract administration.
Has been involved in the award winning ‘Regent’s Place’ and ’Peninsula Square’ projects.
He is responsible for the management and development of the practice’s QA system, heading up the in-house technical research group.




Ania Ares – Associate

Ania has been a landscape architect since 2002. She joined the practice in 2007 and is based in the Leeds office.
She has a broad range of experience in the landscape industry and is dedicated to achieving high quality projects with a strong degree of commercial awareness.She has good analytical, design and problem solving skills, who performs to tight deadlines without sacrificing quality and attention to detail.










Ben Handley – Associate

Ben has 7 years experience of creating functional, yet inventive landscapes that are beautiful, inspiring and challenging.
He has worked on a number of residential and business park schemes.
Ben’s current project is a major public realm strategy in Swindon involving shared space principles.















Paul Winton – Associate

Paul joined Whitelaw Turkington in 2004 and has been involved in a variety of housing schemes and urban realm mixed use developments.
He has experience in the impact assessment, design and implementation of large scale logistic centres.
More recently, Paul has been a ‘key’ member of the design team for ‘de-ringing the ring road’ in Ashford, Kent, which is an award winning scheme that involves new space shared principles.

The remaining associates are: Justin Davies, Adrienne Soudain, Danny Crump and Stefan Vesligaj.

Why I choose Whitelaw and Turkington

I choose this firm because they have earned a place in London’s most important public spaces which says a lot in terms of approach, attitude and response to communal needs. I like the green side of their work such as the drainage system designed by the firm for Generics HQ at Harston Mill, Cambridgeshire that turned out to be 20% cheaper than the traditional drainage system.

Here is one of their projects called Exhibition Road on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London.

I have extracted their key design objectives from their criteria which are listed below:

Project - Exhibition Road
Here are their key design objectives:

The key objective of the design is to adjust the balance between users of the public highway to create a more welcoming, generous, attractive and accessible environment for pedestrians. The design sets out to create:
A memorable sense of place, whilst reinforcing the distinctive character of South Kensington
A modern classic that will set new standards and stand the test of time
A flexible streetscape that will accommodate changing demands over the next century
A design which influences, and is influenced by, the visitor development strategies of the institutions, both physical and intellectual
Rebalancing priorities
Pedestrian priority
The Exhibition Road proposals aim to restore pedestrian priority to the street. This will not be accomplished by excluding vehicles. Instead, the streetscape will be designed differently to reduce the speed of vehicles to below 20 m.p.h. At such speeds drivers engage far more with pedestrians and with their surroundings in general. This leads to a better balance of the relative priorities of vehicle and foot traffic. This approach reconciles the often-competing demands of traffic engineering and urban design. It should produce a streetscape of far higher quality and utility.

Street design review

The proposals review the design of our streets. Until now, streets have separated pedestrians from traffic. This allows more space for more vehicles to travel faster, whilst confining pedestrians to the narrow pavements at the roadside. This process has been reinforced by the use of barriers, railings, bollards and crossings that are intended to protect pedestrians. Ironically, these have instead created a more dangerous and threatening environment by distracting drivers from engaging with their surroundings. These same barriers also constrain pedestrians and restrict their comfort, convenience and choice.

View 1: The museums area of Exhibition Road
today — looking north from Cromwell Road

















View 2: The museums area of Exhibition Road
as proposed - looking north from Cromwell Road




















View 3: The museums area of Exhibition Road
as proposed — at night















My thoughts: The Exhibition Road concept looks like a significant improvement and transforms the street scape into a vibrant pedestrian dominated space. Maybe Oxford street could benefit from the same treatment? I think this design concept should be incorperated in more areas in and around london because this would seperate pedestrians and vehicals overlaping eachother. Whitelaw and Turkington have been presented with lots of complex challenge’s which sound exciting and I would like to see how this project develops.

St. Paul's Green
Here is another project of theirs called: St. Paul's Green

This project aims at providing an area with a new and important green space for Hammersmith which reverses the dominance of the car in the locality to provide a fully accessible pedestrian and cycle route between the River Thames to the south and Hammersmith centre and tube station to the north and east.

The creation of this urban space unifies previously disjointed elements, integrating the forecourt of the listed St. Paul’s Church with an area of former car parking and the space beneath Hammersmith flyover. The three distinct parts of the site have been designed to accept considerable pedestrian activity and to provide open space within a very busy commercial centre. The site is considered as a gateway and the principal route, which creates a unifying element, it is expressed as a ‘broadwalk’ or ‘promenade’. It is created in a gently sloping valley with the ground tilting up and away from the path.
The tree boundary defines the access and recreational space, and visually delineates the site from the surrounding major road systems image 3 and buildings. However, the spacing of trees and the design of the railings permits surveillance into the site. Perceived personal safety is also on site through the use of CCTV.

This new green space, with its large number of seats provides an outdoor lunchtime venue for the many office-based workers in the vicinity.

Here are some photographes:

I travel past the church frequently when I drive over the Hammersmith flyover but I didn't know of this project until I did some research on Whitelaw and Turkington. This is the reason I choose this one and as it happens my sister works in Hammersmith. I like this project because its another one of those quiet inner city green spaces that need to be implemented in more areas to break up the concrete jungle of the city centre. It might not be as big as Hyde Park but it still provides a small getaway for the locals.

Projects near me: Capital West, Brentford (you can see this from Watermans Park)





This 260 apartment block scheme, on a former gasworks site, formed the first element in a wider masterplan to create a new urban quarter close to Kew Bridge in west London. The scheme also accommodates a tree lined public route through the site which has the characteristics of a ‘home zone’ space with pedestrian priority.

Client. Barratt West London
Architects. Asseal Architecture
Engineers. Cameron Taylor Bedford
Completed. 2003

Queen Elizabeth Park



The site, a former army barracks 3km north of Guildford city centre, is being developed for mixed use including 525 dwelling, retail and community facilities and employment use. White Turnington undertook the landscape and visual assessment within the EIA, and was landscape masterplanner for the whole site. Whitelaw Turkington was also responsible for the detailed design for the Linden Homes phrase.

Client. Laing Homes & Linden Homes
Architects. John Thompson & Partners
Completion. 2003