Stephen Buckle is Design Director at ASPECT Studios, a practice that has expanded from its Australian origins into a network of studios in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney in Australia, London in the United Kingdom, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and Shanghai and Guangzhou in China. Operating across regions, ASPECT Studios works at different scales and contexts, retaining a studio culture, consciously avoiding a corporate ecosystem despite growth.

Within this context, ASPECT’s urban work positions landscape as a system embedded in the structure of the city, negotiating between architecture, infrastructure, commercial and environmental imperatives. This positioning is not without friction. It requires translating environmental and social value into the language of development, while resisting the reduction of landscape to image or amenity.
Stephen Buckle has spent over two decades working across some of the world’s most rapidly developing cities, leading design teams across ASPECT Studios’ global network and engaging with diverse regional, cultural and project conditions.

In this interview, Stephen addresses drawing as a method of thinking, the need for clarity under conditions of urban noise, and the rejection of style in favour of place-responsive design. He reflects on working within development-driven contexts, on landscape as an integrated urban system rather than a surface, and on the profession’s persistent tendency to remain a voice in the built environment despite the increasing relevance of its knowledge.

How does ASPECT Studios function as an international office?

We have long operated as what we call “One Studio”.

We have gathered like-minded people across the globe. We celebrate the diversity of places, but connect through our philosophy and purpose. We have studios across continents, providing a diverse spread of experience, knowledge and perspectives. More importantly, it brings diversity of thought. Different cultural and professional perspectives often produce better outcomes. Collaboration is one of our core behaviors, along with curiosity, tenacity, respect and ambition. These are not just about how we behave internally (what we do when no one is watching), but how we approach design itself.

We support that through knowledge sharing, a deep collaborative culture and shared studio systems. We hold regular studio-wide sessions to share and advance knowledge. This is supported by our regenerative design framework, a guiding system that sets clear expectations for the objectives and performance of our work, alongside collective design critiques that strengthen outcomes across the studio.

This allows us to combine local knowledge with global thinking, tailoring our teams to the unique requirements of each project. Learnings from our work in Melbourne and Sydney inform the regeneration of Oxford Street in London, while learnings from hard-working urban districts in China inform new and regenerative districts and communities across India.

Working across different regions and dense urban environments – what can the West learn from the East?

Rather than thinking about the world in terms of East and West, I increasingly see cities as operating within different stages of urbanisation and development, offering a transfer of learning and understanding both ways.

Working across locations has been an incredibly valuable experience. Cities in China and India operate at an intensity that can be difficult to fully grasp without working within them. They can, in a way, be seen as leapfrogging certain stages of urban evolution, moving from deeply rooted historical and cultural foundations directly into hyper-urbanised, intensely populated and rapidly transforming environments, compressing multiple phases of development into a much shorter timeframe, at a much greater intensity, with the move and flex that happens in slower urban growth. The magnitude of population density, visitor numbers and daily urban activity result in critical social and climatic challenges impacts and compound far greater than most Western cities.

This fundamentally changes how public space must perform. Urban landscapes need to be robust, adaptable and capable of accommodating large numbers of people without losing spatial clarity, human scale experience, providing multi-generational amenity whilst responding to the social and environmental challenges.

What are the challenges in planning for those contexts?

In many Western cities, the provision of parks and civic open space is embedded within long-established frameworks, with municipal authorities playing a significant role in delivering and maintaining the public realm. In many Asian cities, however, a large proportion of accessible public space is delivered through private development. Mixed-use projects, commercial districts and technology campuses frequently incorporate landscapes that function as civic space for surrounding communities. This changes how we overtly or covertly address the bigger issues, leveraging commercial investment for the benefit of social and environmental outcomes, whilst generating economic success. Carrying a broader responsibility to create spaces that support community life at a district scale.

When aligned properly, commercial ambition and public benefit are not in conflict. Landscapes that provide comfort, shade, biodiversity, water management and meaningful social space create places people genuinely want to spend time in. That drives footfall, strengthens identity and supports long-term commercial performance.

However, this condition is not without risk. When commercial priorities dominate too heavily, public space can become controlled, transactional and stripped of generosity. Seating is reduced, shade is limited, and the ability to simply occupy space without spending is eroded. This is where landscape architects need to hold the line against what I term the “pay to perch” culture.

Working in these contexts provides a direct view into the kinds of challenges that many Western cities will increasingly need to address.

Also, the pace of development can move at remarkable speed, often progressing from concept to construction in relatively short timeframes. In some instances, projects in China can move from concept to construction within a matter of months rather than years.

Construction pressures can override design intent, particularly when deadlines are tied to political or ceremonial events. The challenge is how to maintain the level of precision and design aspiration when the process is compressed. Communication becomes critical — how you frame your ideas, how you position value.

How do you communicate that value to clients?

You have to understand your audience. A developer is not interested in the same language as a designer. They are thinking about return on investment, footfall, and commercial performance.

So you translate. A successful public space attracts people. That footfall supports economic activity. Nature becomes a differentiator, something that draws people in. Fifteen years back, you talked to a developer about nature, and they’ll just glaze over. In Asia particularly, this has shifted significantly. Nature is no longer an afterthought; it is part of the commercial strategy.

At the same time, it is also about curation, giving people access to seasonal change, to natural systems, even within dense cities. Different moments through the year—flowering, colour change, variation—become part of the experience. People engage with that. They photograph it, return to it. It becomes part of the life of the place. Here, the strong design principle is dealing with all the natural systems, but it’s also dealing with tantalizing and creating moments of delight, which engage with the population and the people.

The Alibaba Campus in Hangzhou is a good example. It is 260,000 sqm, a fully podium-based environment designed for a community of around 30,000 people. The landscape is conceived as a system, incorporating stormwater harvesting, seasonal curation and biodiversity-rich planting within a structural environment. Nature in the city does not have to be passive or purely naturalistic. Within urban environments, nature can be bold, expressive and performative. It can define identity, create experience and support both the social and environmental ambitions of a project, while also contributing to the commercial success of development.

In the context of hyper-urbanised cities, where does landscape architecture sit?

With dense urbanisation, the role of landscape is no longer confined to the ground plane. We are increasingly working within elevated and integrated public realms, shaping complex, multi-level systems where landscape operates across buildings, infrastructure and the public realm simultaneously.

These environments now extend G5+ and beyond. On structure, sunken, internal and external, across elevated podiums, terraces, sky gardens, connective corridors and multi-level sky environments. These are no longer exceptions. They are becoming the primary realm in which landscape operates, the new landscape datum.

In hyper-dense urban contexts, landscape operates across buildings, infrastructure and the public realm simultaneously.

Together, they form interconnected social and environmental systems that maximise visual, physical and emotional connection, unlocking access to meaningful open space in increasingly constrained cities. Water, ecology, microclimate and public life are no longer treated separately. They are integrated into a single system that performs both environmentally and socially.

The next step in this trajectory is the translation of these principles into the structural fabric of the city, not only within open space, but across podiums and elevated conditions where there is no connection to native ground. Through our work on the Alibaba campus, we have tested and refined our thinking on landscape systems as a structure. It has proven to be a robust and transferable model, now informing and guiding our work in this space.

This convergence of real pressures is fundamentally reshaping how cities function, a place where landscape becomes the framework through which density is made liveable. Across rapidly expanding and densifying cities, development has accelerated at a pace, with expectations evolving just as rapidly.

The influence of academic and professional leadership, such as Tongji University and practices like Turenscape in China, has helped embed landscape thinking within policy. The introduction of sponge city principles is a clear example. These strategies are now widely adopted as part of nationwide planning requirements across many cities, even if their implementation varies in depth and rigour.

Much of this shift also stems from the increasing value placed on landscape and the public realm. Clients are aligning with the understanding that the character of a place is not defined by building façades alone, but by the human-scale, inhabitable spaces that connect and activate the city.

As a result, projects are becoming more genuinely collaborative from the outset. This allows meaningful, landscape-led strategies to be embedded early in the process, rather than being squeezed into residual space later.

But that requires a strong voice of landscape architects …

Landscape architects are not typically seen as bold or outspoken figures. I think that is a limitation of the profession. Landscape architecture has historically been a voice in the built environment. If there was ever a time for the profession to take a stronger position, it is now. The complexity of our work — operating across scales, systems, infrastructure, social and environmental layers is already central to where humanity wants to go; we need to help development systems catch up. Speak less to ourselves as a profession (I say whilst doing exactly that) and focus more on communication, influencing policy makers, developers and decision makers.

This is a critical moment for the profession to assert its position. Be bold, with Clarity. More confidence. More leadership. Speak less to ourselves as a profession and focus more on communication, influencing policy makers, developers and decision makers.

If we do not step forward and lead that conversation and own our space, others will. Architects and developers are already adopting the language of landscape, often without the depth of understanding. This is a critical moment for the profession to assert its position. Be bold, with Clarity. More confidence. More leadership.

Where do you start designing a project?

I should probably start a bit earlier than the project itself. Growing up with severe dyslexia, drawing became my primary way of communicating. It’s not something I adopted as a designer. For me, drawing is thinking. So I start with drawing. Always.

Sketching is a way to cut through urban noise. The hand-eye-brain loop helps define clarity at all scales. If you cannot communicate your idea with a series of lines, you are not clear about your intention.

From sketching, site, strategy, principles, and experience through to detail, construction, and coordination, I find that the hand-eye-brain loop and iterative cycle help refine clarity at all scales and stages. That loop lets me test ideas, challenge them, strip them back, and rebuild them quickly.
In the dense, layered urban realms where I work, there’s a lot of noise. Sketching is a way to cut through that. Striving to distil all the competing influences and considerations into a set of clear moves that can guide the project. If you can’t communicate your idea with a simple series of lines, you’re not clear about what you’re doing.

Sketching allows for simultaneous multi-scale iteration. Urban strategy, spatial sequencing, programme, narrative, experience, detail, material junctions—they all sit in the same process. What used to be a sketchbook hoarder, now mostly an iPad, but it’s the same way of working. Just faster, zoomable, more layered, more shareable. In that process, I find myself to be obsessively self-critical, writing scathing critical notes on my own drawing. You sketch something, realise it’s not right, iterate, question what’s not working, develop and move on.

Your designs are high-pitched in all aspects. Do you follow a particular design code?

We don’t design in a house style. In every project, we strive to find a way to respond to the site. But that doesn’t mean it’s always neutral in dialogue with its context.

I seek unashamedly punchy responses, giving space character-defining identity and a break from mundane. The use of narrative helps to guide one beyond the style, define the clarity of intent, steering the project.

Much of the contemporary rapidly urbanised city is defined by repetition. Engineered streets, standardised materials and traffic-dominated mind-numbing environments sapping the soul from those that experience it while eroding identity. Having worked across hundreds of districts and cities, particularly in rapidly expanding urban environments, I have seen how often most of the new districts could be interchanged without being apparent. Place identity is left to architecture and façade treatment alone, and how often that falls short.

Sometimes the right response is sensitive, to build on what’s already there—heritage, materials, texture, tone, scale. Other times, it’s to deliberately push back against the monotony and create something with a strong identity. Something with clarity. I seek responses that are hard working, spatially defined by programme, social amenity, systems, adaptability and connection, while remaining unashamedly punchy. For me, responding to place is not about blending in. It is about disrupting the monotony of particular urban environments with a distinct, character-defining identity. Each project should offer a bold break from the mundane, creating spaces that are social, engaging, recognisable and deeply human.

I find the use of narrative a particularly useful tool. It forces one away from simply doing what we like or repeating what we have done before. Instead, it creates an additional constraint or brief that must be satisfied alongside the functional, technical and programmatic requirements of the design. It pushes the response toward something rooted in place, addressing social challenges and often framing larger tensions such as those between commercial drivers and environmental responsibility.

For me, a clear narrative brings discipline and direction to a project and forms clarity of intent. A strong guiding idea, a north star, aligns the team, takes you on a design journey, informs decisions at every stage, and ensures the work is not shaped by subjective likes, dislikes or styles. So, within the hyper-urban setting, the aim is to distil that complexity into something tangible, experiential, and legible, avoiding dilution.

To design with a predetermined style is to know the outcome before the process has even begun. For me, it’s more the process, one that results in bold urban interventions, activating public life and crafted with a tangible clarity. I guess that is a kind of style itself.

What sits outside the work, what inspires you personally? If your design had music, what would it be, not jazz, I suppose?

I tend to stay quite close to the work, to be honest. With that, I have been able to visit, work and live in many cultures. When not designing, taking the camera out and walking the streets, experiencing these places, observing how people use space, how movement happens, where people stop, gather or avoid. Those everyday behaviours reveal far more about how a place works than any plan or drawing, and I enjoy capturing moments. As a counterbalance to it all, I am drawn to places of rich natural immersion, such as the New Forest National Park or rugged Scottish coastlines.

Design as music, yeah, you’re right, not Jazz, not enough clarity, maybe something that resonates from my youth, a vibrant, energetic mash-up of punk with moments of euphoric trance.