The very best office openings are marked with a good party. LDA Design’s arrival in Bristol was no exception as Board Director Frazer Osment and the LDA Design team hosted the launch of our new office in Bristol’s Engine Shed.
Places help to make us who we are. So, we asked a Bristol resident, BBC radio producer and author Tim Dee, to talk about how Bristol has helped shape him and how place goes about shaping us all. Tim has just published Landfill and he edited Ground Work – an anthology of new writing about contemporary places. In his address, Tim quoted 20th century Breton poet Guillevic, in a translation by Seamus Heaney:
I had my existence. I was there
Me in place and the place in me
Capturing what is so special about Bristol, Tim went on to describe the city’s unusual relationship with the sea which arrives inland up through the Avon Gorge, that world-scale landscape right on the doorstep. From almost anywhere locked within Bristol’s streets and buildings you can see beyond to a green rim where the city ends.
In his welcome to a full room, Frazer said that a strong identity helps a place to flourish, and Bristol is also defined by the character of its people, its environmentalism and its creativity. The success of any place – from how much people love their city to how quickly a new development sells – depends on the sociability of its shared spaces. It’s in the space between buildings that we live out our lives.
We are excited to be in Bristol. It is fair to say our sails are up, to catch the winds of change.
Images copyright Oliver Edwards/LDA Design
