A central London landscape architecture studio, founded in 1988 by Robert Townshend, known for public spaces such as the King's Cross area and More London.
Townshend Landscape Architects is a London studio that designs public spaces, which the industry calls the public realm. That means the squares, streets, parks and roof terraces that people walk through every day. Its own description is of high-quality public realm schemes at many scales, in the UK and abroad. Its work includes landscape and public space around More London beside the Thames and Bishops Square in Spitalfields, and it worked with Allies and Morrison and Demetri Porphyrios as joint masterplanners of King's Cross Central, where Granary Square is a well-known result.
Robert Townshend founded the studio in 1988. Over the years it has taken on projects such as the open spaces at Brindleyplace in Birmingham, Bluewater shopping centre in Kent and the Central Spine in Manchester, as well as the Chateau de Villandry gardens in France and schemes in Budapest, Warsaw, Abu Dhabi, Jersey and Vancouver. It has won awards that include a 2000 Civic Trust Award for Brindleyplace and the Best New Public Space category at the 2007 London Planning Awards for Bishops Square.
The studio is based in Central London, at Northumberland House on High Holborn, and its UK work spreads across London, Birmingham, Manchester and Kent. Its focus is landscape architecture, public realm masterplanning and urban design for the UK, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. We found no evidence of other UK offices, so this is a single-studio practice where junior and senior people sit together and learn from each other's drawings and sketches.
Its website says the studio values design and integration and works collaboratively in a studio environment. It says it wants places that are unique and long-lasting, and public spaces that support lively environments contributing to people's health, happiness and well-being. It supports community work, including the educational charity Global Generation, the Skip Garden at King's Cross and the Paper Garden at Canada Water, and it uses hand-drawn sketching as part of its design process. These are the studio's own descriptions.
The jobs in a studio like this centre on landscape architects at different levels, from people drawing up planting and paving plans to those leading client meetings, plus visualisation and administrative staff. If you enjoy art, geography, design and technology or biology, and like sketching and thinking about how people use outdoor places, it is a good example of where those interests can lead. Current vacancies and the full team are on the studio's own website.
Website: townshendla.com
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