Landscape as a Catalyst for Change presents a cross-section of BD Landscape Architects’ work over the past decade and a half, arranged thematically rather than chronologically. The publication moves through the practice’s core territories—public realm, meanwhile uses, housing, educational landscapes, and community-led projects—before closing with a reflection on the studio’s trajectory and the shifting conditions under which landscape architecture is currently produced in the UK. Rather than a retrospective in the celebratory sense, the book reads as a survey of recurring questions: how landscapes are made, who they are made with, and what forms of social and environmental repair they can realistically support.

Introduction is written by Isabel Allen, the Editor of Architecture Today and the Editorial Director of BEAM (Built Environment and Architecture Media), who frames the book against a broader cultural shift in how landscapes are perceived: from sites of pastoral comfort to systems marked by ecological strain. She argues that landscape architecture now operates within this altered gaze, balancing loss with a new precision about environmental function and human dependency. The introduction positions landscape as both evidence of ecological rupture and a medium through which people recalibrate their relationship with place, seasonality, and civic life. Allen traces precisely where landscape architecture should position itself:

“We are learning to adjust our gaze. To see the freshly mown lawn as an assault on biodiversity. To see the green field as a monocultural wasteland; abandoned by wildlife, poisoned by toxins, a victim of commercial agriculture and its relentless appetites. To see intense sunlight as a weapon, set to warm our oceans, threaten our harvests, scorch our skin. We are learning to view the landscape through the prism of environmental degradation. But every loss of innocence goes hand in hand with newfound wisdom. We are learning to understand our landscapes as a physical manifestation of our complex co-existence with the natural world.”

The book continues with Public Realm, including presentations of BD projects Cardinal Place, The Green Spine, All Saints Street, Wandsworth Gasworks, The Strand, and concludes with a research article Landscape as a Catalyst, by Romy Rawlings, Deep Green consultancy director. She doesn’t shy from “uncomfortable truths”, addressing the need to balance People, Planet, and Profit, levelling up society:

“However, as we see all too frequently, prioritising economic gains over environmental or social factors can result in poorly executed landscapes that fail to deliver long-term benefits. In our essentially capitalist economy, profitability remains a primary motivator and, without a solid business case for investing in landscape, projects are often ‘value engineered’ to a mere shadow of their original potential. And, even when the original investment is maintained, much is often lost due to a lack of management and ongoing care.”

In the Making the Meanwhile chapter, we point out The King’s Cross Pond Club, the UK’s first natural
public swimming pool, a temporary meanwhile landscape, opened between 2025 and 2016. The pond was purified naturally, without added chemicals, and the users campaigned against its planned closure while the development was kicking in. The chapter includes BD’s projects Glassfields, Sayer Street and The Meadow, Milkshake Tree, and concludes with an article by Andy Puncher, Design Director at Lateral and Fabrix, on Growing Communities being central to BD’s work.

Another interesting chapter in the scope of BD’s work is Destination Landscapes, where designers create experiences for foreign users, interpreting and alleviating certain landscapes and their features. In Living Wetland Theatre, the experience of birds and the landscape is created 1:1, in situ. The design structure recreates and feeds the perishing wetlands.

Residential projects are covered in Places for People, out of which, the West Green Place in the London Borough of Haringey stands out with communal gardens, loosely designed interface, yet superb material choice and detail execution of a rather small-scale project. In Lovedon Fields, BD create similarly shabby-looking, biodiverse, meadowy public space, twisting the client’s brief HAB [Happiness Architecture Beauty], their way. Campuses and Schools are similarly created with much attention to catering for ecological as well as social functions. However small a patch, BD use every inch to host a user. The book’s content concludes with the chapters Community and Practice. An incredibly interesting project, designing a centre where guide dogs are trained, Guide Dogs for the Blind, makes us think about designing from a different perspective, not only executing an inclusive design for the visually impaired, but for their leads too.

The book presents 35 projects across more than 10 years of experience. Research articles which accompany the presentation, written by prominent practitioners and voices in the field, speak not only about the quality of BD’s work but also about building lasting connections through their designs. We also applaud the BD founder, Rob Beswick, for socially and politically engaged conduct, his optimism despite austerity, and take him for word, when he says: “We are yet to know how the design by numbers approach for Biodiversity Net Gain can be integrated holistically into our projects, and how value engineering can be tempered to allow landscape to act as the glue that successfully binds together places.”