FACE to FACE: Greening the desert

Geoff Sanderson, principal of GCLA.

Geoff Sanderson, principal of Green Concepts Landscape Architects, talks about the disconnect between the interiors and the exteriors of developments in the Middle East.

Is the current financial crisis affecting the landscaping business?

We recently rebranded from Green Concepts to GCLA (Green Concepts Landscape Architects) and are a firm of landscape architects who deal in master planning, to design, to supervision. We currently have offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and are shortly opening in Riyadh, Singapore and Sydney, so in short, even with the credit crisis, the business is growing.
Even though business is slowing down a little bit, we have contracts which will see us through this lean period, such as the Arabian Canal. We have on-going projects with Nakheel, Aldar and the Abu Dhabi airport. We are confident about the future and we are continuing to recruit.

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Would you say that most landscape projects in the region don’t reflect the Arabic culture.

I notice that there is no or very little Arabic influence in most buildings in the region. The Mina Salam hotel is the best example in all of the UAE of the great connection between the interiors and exterior landscaping of a building which reflects the culture of the place it is built in. As a landscape architect, I would like to see more of that.
Also there is usually a disconnect between the inside and the outside of a building.

The best projects we have worked on are the ones where all the team members were in place from day one. There should be a seamless link between design elements, both inside and outside. There is no special expertise that should preclude you from understanding what is happening inside a building as a landscape architect. We have done a number of projects where the landscape decided what was happening in the lobby of a building. There should be a healthy design relationship between all the designers involved in a project.

What are the challenges of working in this region?

I think it is sense of urgency in each project. These are driven by investor realities. Financers want to get a return on their investment very quickly. The current crisis will settle some of that down. Another big problem is generating expectations at concept stage that cannot be realised. It is unfair on the client when some landscape architects say they can deliver something which is not possible to do.

Also it is a challenge to ensure that each development is different from what is being built next door. But I hope that changes soon and developers realise that there should be some sort of synergy between developments.

We have also had experiences where we have to deal with huge egos, particularly with architects who believe they control everything, and that’s not right. Only the project manager needs to be in control of deliverables, and everyone needs to work as a team.

How does the climate affect the landscape in this region?

The summer temperatures are so severe here, that most plants can’t cope with it. So survival rate of a lot of what we would like to grow is zero. At the Atlantis project, all the Royal palms along the waterfront are dead and they had just been installed. This happened because they were the wrong selection for that place. There is a leisure park in Sports City, Doha in which they have ordered large mature trees from Mozambique, out of that only 20% have survived.

Most landscape architects have to avoid doing what doesn’t work in this climate. The extremes here are just so extreme that we now say it is not just about designing landscape, but designing landscape which can thrive. A landscape architect needs to be involved right at the beginning of a project so he can advise on the right way the shade of buildings can be used, or how the cooling breeze from the sea can be let into the landscape space.