KLA was founded in 1991 by Lynn Kinnear and has become a practice recognised throughout Europe as one of a small number of UK practices pushing a new agenda in UK Landscape Design.
The practice has a track record of innovative projects that combine a conceptual approach to the Art of Landscape Architecture with an enthusiasm for new ideas and an open approach to working with others. We win many awards for our work that often recognise our unique approach to collaborative working and the positive contribution this gives to regeneration.
The practice has challenged architecture to compete for centre space. The Square at Unity and Hellings Street Park are landscape objects which play with scale to create new suprising places, separate from their context.
KLA’s first completed project was Hellings Street Park in Wapping, commissioned by the LDDC and completed in 1995. The project received a Civic Trust Award. This project had a strong conceptual basis, experimenting with ideas of escapism and fantasy in city green spaces. The project is also a strong physical landscape object in the urban landscape. In the Unity project in 2007, we copied a tile pattern from St Georges Hall and used it at giant scale in a new context. In using this motif from an existing well known architectural building a subliminal link between the two places is established. The tile is further transformed through the use of mirrors to reflect pattern and divert it onto vertical surfaces. The pattern runs uninterrupted over a change of level, uniting what are effectively two spaces into one simple motif. This project won an RIBA award in 2007.
Another landmark project was Walsall Art Gallery in collaboration with Caruso St John and Richard Wentworth in 2001. We played with the idea of vehicular space taken over by pedestrian use through the creation of a giant striped surface like a giant zebra crossing. This project also plays with landscape as an object, the striped surface moves along the canal signifying the possibility of urban renewal. This project won an RIBA Award in 2000 and was a Stirling prize finalist in 2000 as well as Mies Van der Rohe Award in 2001 and a Civic Trust award in 2002.
Daubeney experimental playground worked with a group of interventions which suggest activity rather than prescribe it and require children to collaborate in order to play. The practice has worked on many projects which promote the idea of playful urban realm and this project is an important landmark in the development of these ideas. This project was completed in 2003 and won a Hackney Design Award in 2005.
Normand Park was a great opportunity to work with North Fulham New Deals for Communities on innovative community engagement. We are obsessed with the narrative of a project. Talking, looking, raising people’s expectations, visiting places together, unveiling and discovering what makes a place interesting. Finding out the stories behind places can involve unearthing peoples interests, confronting polarised views, finding out what needs mending both physically and socially. Small germs of activity in a community and surrounding open space can be built upon. Our project at Normand Park linked into the existing gardening clubs at the two adjacent schools. We fund raised for these schools so they could develop the green aspects of their own playgrounds and initiate the community garden in the park by propagating plants for the new community garden. The project had a team of artists working alongside the design team, involved with local groups and supporting their involvement in the park project.
The practice has a strong interest in pattern, style and fashion. For example, the Normand Park project uses a flower motif to link the site to its past use in the 18th century as a south facing orchard. This motif has been used to make a textile pattern over a concrete surface. This pattern has a lightness of presence on the surface and will wear away over time, leaving a shadowy trace on the surface.
The practice is currently working on three new parks in London Borough of Waltham Forest. These projects are on the Olympic fringe and will physically link into our work at the Olympic Village at the new all age Chobham Academy. This school sits either side of Temple Mill Lane and involved the urban design of Temple Mill Lane, creating a fun walk to school from Leyton. These projects bring together our experience of smaller projects into the urban renewal of a larger area of the olympic fringe.
The practice is also the design advisor to the All London Green Grid Area 7 : London’s Downlands. This strategic subregional scale project is a unique opportunity for the practice to apply our skills at a London wide scale and to experiment with the ideas that drive the practice ie perception and experience of landscape, escapism and fantasy, engagement and pattern. These ideas are set against our understanding of the natural and man made systems that govern our landscape.
