public realm/landscape
19 Winchester Road, NW3 3NR
what3words: glue.hood.couches
This year marks LUC’s 60th anniversary. We are celebrating a legacy founded by two landscape architects and an ecologist, built on creativity, collaboration, and meaningful design. To mark the occasion, we are showcasing five projects highlighting the breadth and diversity of LUC’s work across disciplines and design approaches. Together, they demonstrate our thoughtful and impactful work.
Finchley Road, Swiss Cottage
South Hampstead
113, 13, 187, 268, 31, 46, C11
Swiss Cottage Open Space is one of Camden’s primary public green spaces, located between the library, theatre, leisure centre, retail frontages and surrounding residential neighbourhoods. LUC’s vision reimagines this prominent urban park as a vibrant, biodiverse and inclusive civic landscape that supports recreation, wellbeing, biodiversity and community life.
The proposals respond to both immediate development pressures and longer-term aspirations for a more connected and multifunctional green space. Designed to support everyday use, public events, play, relaxation and social interaction, the project seeks to strengthen the role of the park as a welcoming civic landscape at the heart of the local community.
The design builds on the site’s existing strengths, including its distinctive terraced landform and popular water feature, while addressing challenges relating to biodiversity, seasonality, connectivity and accessibility. The proposals aim to create a landscape with year-round appeal, integrating play, seating, planting, events and flexible public use into a cohesive and inclusive public realm.
LUC’s landscape strategy focuses on creating a multifunctional park that better connects surrounding uses and communities. Enhanced planting and habitat creation seek to improve biodiversity and climate resilience, while upgraded circulation routes and public spaces support movement, gathering and activity throughout the site.
Visitors will have the opportunity to learn about the role of landscape-led regeneration in shaping urban public spaces and how the design responds to challenges relating to biodiversity, accessibility, climate resilience and community use.
The project demonstrates how public green space can support both environmental resilience and civic life through thoughtful landscape design. Visitors will also be able to explore how community-led engagement and co-design have informed proposals for the future of this important public space
