What inspires us

Inspiration for a new landscape design can come from lots of different places.

When we were commissioned to undertake landscape design work for Powys Crematorium in mid Wales, currently awaiting planning consent, we considered everything from the history of the site to its topography.

The aspiration of the project is to create a crematorium and burial ground for Powys and its people and it needs to be of the place. In order to develop the design, we needed to define what remembrance means to the local people and how that can be represented in the landscape.

Like the majority of Wales, the communities and settlements of Powys are inherently rural in scale and character. Over centuries, living and working in the area has been deeply engrained in the rich and varied landscape through agriculture, the wildlife and the influence of nature from the mountains to the rolling hills and river valleys that flow through it.

The landscape of Powys has had a major influence on the growth and character of the communities that inhabit it. And the culture that has developed from this relationship has shaped people’s memories to create a unique place in the heart of Wales.

In our approach, we used these memories to inform the design for the whole crematorium site using components of the landscape from hedgerows and woodland to the use of water, stone, timber and brick.