Long term vision

, March 2nd, 2009

From a vantage point of several years’ experience in the UAE, Hyder Consulting’s Michael Sandford tells COD why he thinks the economic slowdown could be good for regional designers, and why the public realm is the key to successful outdoor design. 

Originally established in the Gulf  as an infrastructure engineering consulting firm, Hyder Consulting is now one of the region’s largest multi-disciplinary design and advisory businesses.

The firm set up a landscape and urban design division some five years ago as a means for its Abu Dhabi office to provide a landscape service to the local municipality and has grown ever since.

The collaboration with Abu Dhabi municipality proved fruitful with Hyder later securing a contract with the municipality to provide landscape design and construction supervision service for all public realm on Abu Dhabi island.

Outside of Abu Dhabi, the firm’s projects in the GCC include work on the landscape masterplan of the new city development of Lusail in Qatar.

Hyder Consulting operates three offices in the region: Abu Dhabi, its first and central office, where it employs 20 people; Bahrain, where it has seven staff, and Dubai, where it has five. The company’s GCC design unit is supported by a team of 27 employees in Manila.

The company’s Dubai office includes staff integrated from ACLA, which Hyder acquired approximately three years ago in a bid to expand its landscape and urban design services in the region on the back of the boom for landscape design services.



CHANGING TIMES

One of the biggest changes long-timers at the firm have seen over the years in the region, according to Hyder landscape design discipline director Michael Sandford, is the fast pace at which the market for landscaping design services has developed.

“The biggest real change has been in the speed things had been progressing up until three to six months ago,” says Sandford. “I had never seen anything like it. Things were just progressing at an Olympian pace. There was a lot of urgency and projects of extraordinary vision were being proposed.”

This fast pace recently slowed, of course, with the onset in the Gulf of the global economic downturn.

But while the landscape and urban design division of Hyder, along with others, has had to adjust to the suspension of some projects in Dubai, Abu Dhabi has proved a much more robust market, says Sandford.

“We are less affected in Abu Dhabi although delivery of one or two of our projects has slowed,” he says, adding, however, that the effect of the slowdown in Dubai means that the market in Abu Dhabi has become a lot more competitive than it was previously.

And, according to Sandford, while the market change was unexpected, it has brought some positives for players in the outdoor design industry.

 “There is much more time to pause and reflect on the development priorities and to focus attention on those projects that are likely to be more successful,” he says.

“I think this is a huge positive. Slowing the pace of development down is probably a good thing for the UAE in general over all,” he adds.

With the onset of a slower period of development in the region, designers now have the opportunity to provide a much more thoughtful design service, Sandford explains. 

“When you are moving those things on at the speed of an express train, it sometimes doesn’t allow the time to be as thoughtful about the solutions you are proposing as you might like,” he says.

“Too often it doesn’t afford you the time to explore the best possible design solutions.  But now we have the time to do that because we don’t have deadlines that too often, if not unreasonable, keep us working at such an extraordinary pace that it is very difficult to develop our own expression.”

Slowing things down also allows for more efficiency in terms of providing an integrated service and co-ordinating between the various disciplines on a project, adds Sandford.

This is an important consideration for Hyder given that approximately 80% of the firm’s landscape and urban design work comes as a result of the integrated design service offered by the company.

THE PUBLIC REALM

One of the key focuses for Hyder’s landscape and urban design division is on the public realm. Much of the division’s work is related to the public realm, says Sandford, with the most obvious example being the projects the company has done for Abu Dhabi municipality. 

“The public realm is incredibly important,” says Sandford. “It is the space that most people experience outside their normal living and working conditions and all research shows an improved public realm in any city generates a much more positive attitude towards life in general.”

But despite the obvious benefits of a strong public realm, it is only in the last two or three years that the design approach has been extended to it, notes Sandford. “If you look around here, there has historically been a disregard for the quality of the public realm experience,” he comments.

From a design perspective, the main consideration in planning a public realm is comfort, he notes. “The main aspects you are looking at in terms of the philosophical approach are providing comfort for people in the outdoor environment so they can move between spaces effectively and easily and enjoy the outdoor experience in comfort,” he says.

“Of course this means shade where shade is necessary and access to the sun when and where that is required.  Those requirements will differ in different parts of the world in different seasons and at different times of the day.”



In the GCC, with its extreme heat, many are put off by the perceived challenge of creating a comfortable outdoor space. But this doesn’t need to be the case, notes Sandford.
 
“If you look at the climate in the UAE, you get a few months of extreme heat and the rest of the year has quite a pleasant climate really where the outdoor environment is much more appreciated. In terms of trying to ameliorate the extreme conditions of the summer period, it is really a matter of providing settings that offer all of the things that make it more comfortable and number one of those of course is shade.”

“Providing useful spaces for people to use is the key,” he concludes.

FACT FILE HYDER CONSULTING

Established in region Approx 45 years ago
Landscape division established 2004
Regional offices Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain
Number of staff in regional landscape division 56 (includes Manila)
Services include landscape architectural design, public open space design, urban design, landscape and urban design documentation, irrigation design and documentation, sustainable landscape planning and design
Key projects in the region include Lusail, Qatar; New Corniche Swimming Beach, Abu Dhabi; Muroor Road Streetscape, Abu Dhabi, Tamouh Landscape Plan; Al Reem Island, Abu Dhabi
Website www.hyderconsulting.com

BIOGRAPHY

Michael Sandford has 25 years experience in all aspects of landscape architecture discipline and practice. Prior to joining Hyder, Sandford established his own practice Edge Environmental Design in Melbourne, Australia.