Cannon Ivers
Director
I hold a master of landscape architecture degree with distinction from Harvard, and I am a teaching fellow at the Bartlett School of Landscape Architecture. I authored the book ‘Staging Urban Landscapes: The Activation and Curation of Flexible Public Spaces’ (Birkhauser), and I am a chartered member of the Landscape Institute. I frequently contribute to design discourse through publications examining 3D design and digital fabrication, spatial programmability, intelligent water design and high-impact, low-maintenance planting design.
Recent highlights include creating a new public space at Strand Aldwych, removing cars from this bottleneck to allow visitors to appreciate the incredible architecture and institutions that edge the space. I hope it becomes a place where art is made not displayed, where dance is rehearsed not performed. I’m also working on a number of projects in east London, including Albert Island, Aberfeldy Village and Westferry, and on a new gateway into Reading at Station Hill. I am grateful to have worked on some of LDA Design’s most ambitious projects, including the 2012 Olympic Park, Battersea Power Station and Burgess Park. I am on the New London Architecture Expert Panel for Public Realm.
Q&A
The Landscape Imagination by James Corner, an impressive catalogue of writing and thinking that has influenced the depth and breadth of landscape architecture over the past two decades.
The Lost Battles by Jonathan Jones, which chronicles the period of the Renaissance when both Michaelangelo and Leonardo were creating the most enduring and inspiring works of art the world has ever seen, and the rivalry that existed between them.
The work of Angus MacKechnie at ‘Watch This Space’ outside the National Theatre made an indelible impact on how I see public space. It affirms what Richard Sennett said about public space, “The most important fact about the public realm is what happens in it.”
The top of any mountain, or from the depths of a forest. Powerful reminders of our reliance on the natural world - the detailed beauty, resilience and enduring enormity.
