Four members of the landscape profession have been appointed to the recently announced HS2 independent design panel to advise on design proposals for the new railway.
Four members of the landscape profession have been appointed to the recently announced HS2 independent design panel to advise on design proposals for the new railway.
The panel is chaired by architect Sadie Morgan , a co-founding director of dRMM, who is also a member of the newly formed National Infrastrcture Commission.
The landscape architects on the panel are:
Annie Coombs, a landscape architect and Fellow of the Landscape Institute, with a master’s degree in planning.
She started her career working on environmental regeneration projects in the public sector in the UK. She worked in Asia for over 15 years, most recently as managing director of the Asian businesses of an international environmental consultancy, sitting on the main board. Her main project work in Asia was large scale infrastructure, in particular linear projects including road, railway and drainage schemes.
Annie is co-chair of the Northwest’s design review panel at Places Matter! She regularly chairs or sits on design review panels. She is one of Design Council Cabe’s Built for Life examiners and a Built Environment Expert. She is also an examining inspector for major infrastructure projects with the Planning Inspectorate.
She works as an independent consultant and enabler, engaged on green infrastructure and environmental regeneration, and has led training on neighbourhood planning. She has been active in community planning, chaired a parish plan and a local area partnership environment group. She volunteers on policy matters for the Landscape Institute.
Johanna Gibbons, a landscape architect and founding partner of J & L Gibbons LLP.
She is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute and serves on several advisory panels including Historic England, The Forestry Commission, and Cambridgeshire County Council. She is a member of the Trees and Design Action Group, a cross-disciplinary group that seeks to influence practice and policy concerning urban trees.
Johanna’s expertise concerns heritage, green infrastructure and urban regeneration and she leads on collaborative cross-disciplinary practice at a strategic and local level, mostly in London.
J & L Gibbons is an award-winning practice, as finalists in the prestigious Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize 2014; winners of the RIBA’s Vauxhall Missing Link international competition in 2013; and recipients of many Landscape Institute awards.
Its work at the Angel Building in Islington won the Forestry Commission’s award for Trees and Development. The practice is currently part of a collaborative pilot research project with King’s College London and Nomad, exploring how the urban environment affects mental wellbeing.
Johanna has recently exhibited as part of the ‘Rethinking Urban Landscapes’ and ‘Urbanistas’ exhibitions, celebrating innovative women in urban design.
Alister Kratt, a board director at LDA Design, a global environmental design business based in the UK with projects around the world.
He specializes in large, multidisciplinary projects and development in sensitive contexts.
He leads energy and infrastructure teams, with expertise in nuclear, tidal range and port sectors. He also leads development and regeneration teams, with particular experience in university and mixed use development.
Alister is responsible for LDA Design’s research and professional services with particular emphasis in masterplanning, integrated EIA and contextual planning and assessment.
Alister is a landscape architect and masterplanner with significant experience in project leadership. He is an experienced expert witness and is on the Design Commission for Wales review panel.
Kathryn Moore, President of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) and a professor of Landscape Architecture at Birmingham City University. She has published extensively on design quality, theory, education and practice.
Kathryn’s book ‘Overlooking the Visual: Demystifying the Art of Design’ (2010) provides the basis for critical, artistic discourse. Her teaching, research, and practice set within landscape architecture have clear implications for architecture, planning, urban design and other art and design disciplines, in addition to philosophy, aesthetics and education more generally.
Chair of the pilot design review panel for the HS2 landscape guidelines, Kathryn has taken a lead role in redefining the relationship between landscape, culture and governance, finance, health and community engagement within the context of the Birmingham region.
As president of IFLA, she is a member of the steering committee and founding partner of the World Design Summit to be held in Montreal in October 2017.
Other members of the panel include architect Selina Mason, who previously worked for the Olympic Delivery Authority and the London Legacy Development Corporation, and is now a main board director at LDA Design.