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The Forum Exeter, Devon

An RIBA south west award wining building at Exeter University in Devon; The Forum. This building benefited from design review during the design and pre-planning stage

Design Review Panel Training 2018

Design Review Panel training session carried out in Taunton and the Somerset County Cricket Ground in November 2018. The event was extremely well attended by local authority representatives, house builders and design team members

Exeter Quay by Jonathan Braddick

Photograph of Exeter Quay taken by Architect and Design Review Panel Manager Jonathan Braddick. The Design Review Panel holds regular design review panel sessions at Exeter City Council

Design Review Panel Training 2018

Design Review Panel training event 2018. Jonathan Tricker, Highways Engineer, Urban Designer & Director at Phil Jones Associates, gave a talk entitled: ‘Highway Design in Placemaking’

Steiner School Exeter

The design review Panel was engaged by Willmott Dixon during the pre-application design stage of the project to help them prepare a design that would be acceptable to the local authority

Design Review Panel Site Visit Poole

Photograph from a 2018 design review panel site visit carried out in Dorset in 2018. A full sit down design review panel was subsequently held in the Poole Borough Council Offices

North Grays Farm Para 80 House

External visualization for a NPPF paragraph 55 (now 79) house that was presented to the design review panel. This project has subsequently gone on to achieve planning permission and is now built on site

Design Review Panel Training 2017

Design Review Panel training session carried out in Exeter, Devon in December 2017. The event was extremely well attended by local authority representatives, house builders and design team members

Exeter Quay - Rockfish Restaurant

A small but sensitive project in Exeter Quay; The Rockfish Restaurant has been designed by Grainge Architects who engaged with The Design Review Panel during the design & pre -application planning stage

Extra Care Development by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects

Pegasus Life secured planning permission through public inquiry for a Sarah Wigglesworth Architects scheme for a C2 assisted living community at The Knowle, Sidmouth, Devon. The Design Review Panel (www.designreviewpanel.co.uk) were instructed by East Devon District Council (EDDC) to provide multidisciplinary, expert, independent and impartial guidance and feedback to the local authority, applicant and design team during the pre-application design stage.

Plymouth Hoe

Photograph of Plymouth Hoe, Devon. The Design Review Panel holds regular design review panel sessions at Plymouth City Council

Design Review Panel Training

Design Review Panel training session carried out in Exeter, Devon. The event was extremely well attended and incorporated a mock design review panel session and design workshop.

Writer's pictureJonathan Braddick

Reflections of a Landscape Architect



Writing a Design Review Panel blog article

''When approached by The Design Review Panel to scribe a piece for the month of May, I gave my article to my A level English teenager to read with hope that it would achieve a gold star! I failed drastically and was sent back to the metaphorical drawing board and not sure this version is any better following a re-read and roll of the eyes.

Both my children have worked harder than I ever did for their exams and they are keen not to be landscape architects. They do not see it as an exciting dynamic career and I wonder why I felt the need to train as one and would I follow the same path again if I was in their shoes? I am not sure I would.

Perhaps I the yearn for the nostalgic days of the drawing board, the scratch of tracing paper and the permanently stained fingers of rotring ink when the career seemed more creatively design focused.


Working on a drawing board

The profession has changed, as I suppose all do, which is good. The status of landscape architecture has altered, grown and diversified with design specialisms adding weight within large scale projects, the industry and with the wider public. This has allowed us to have a voice at platforms like The Design Review Panel, whereas historically our role was not reviewed as seriously.


Swan Paul Partnership Chartered Landscape Architects Sketch Scheme

Yet, in the strive to be a profession taken seriously, landscape architecture is often used as a tool to get through planning, rather than an integral part of the design team. The element of being truly creative now makes up less of my working time.


Designer working on a Computer

Computers have made our job easier and those with less design skills can all use Photoshop or SketchUp to create elements of design work, but they lack creativity when examined in detail. So when a real design piece comes into the office, we tend to guard it, reveling in the process of drawing, sketching and spending too much time trying to find the marker pens!


Swan Paul Partnership Landscape Architects Sketch 2

So far this month, the marker pens have been scribbling designs for a mini rain-garden design for a small community garden, a science garden, a maths garden, playground design and the design of Minehead seafront.

Unfortunately, I am not the creative on this project but as an office we have been discussing, scribbling and finding lovely images that if the budget allowed could be included. The beachfront scheme is very community sensitive and features regularly in local newspapers and requires clever creative design to meet all expectations.


Swan Paul Partnership Landscape Architects Sketch

There is a joy to designing and creating something positive for the end user and am sure there is a place for report writing within the profession! Perhaps as I was not trained to write a methodical report but taught how to read the landscape, the old fashioned ‘sense of space’, that I find it less exciting. However, it is part of the development in our profession and perhaps why there has been a rise in urban and garden designers who are enjoying designing.

Watching RHS Chelsea this week on TV only enforces this desire for creativity.

Am I just being nostalgic? Perhaps.''

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Many thanks to Louise Baugh, Chartered Landscape Architect and director at Swan Paul Partnership Ltd , Chartered Landscape Architects, who has provided the above blog article. Louise is a Design Review Panel member, attending Design Review Panels across the South West; in Cornwall, Devon (both Plymouth and Exeter), Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire and Swindon.

Swan Paul is a practice of Chartered Landscape Architects established in Taunton, Somerset in 1986 and a registered practice with the Landscape Institute. Our work covers a wide variety of project sectors across the South West region and Nationally and we work for both public and private clients, offering professional client focused services to help you realise your ambitions for your project.

01823 282971 / info@swanpaul.co.uk

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