Brickchat

There is an increasing emphasis on introducing green and open space into urban developments with so-called nature dosing. But unless we are prepared to restore South London to its marshy pre-Industrial roots, or use green belt land for planting trees rather than build houses, our work will always change places from what they once were.

There are cases where this is successful, with residents being given open, green spaces both to look out onto and inhabit. Interventions range from roof gardens on residential towers all the way down to thoughtful planting along otherwise bare pavements. But the inherent irony in the practice of nature-dosing is that for better or worse, all projects concerning the built environment disturb and alter their surroundings.

Our best efforts in this area focus on improving the spaces between buildings and their context, ultimately delivering better places to live, work and play. But designers must stop thinking that the work we do is universally good for society. In construction, almost every move we make has a negative effect somewhere, If not on the constrained urban sites where we ply our trade, then hundreds of miles away in the limestone quarries and slate mines. To construct is to fundamentally change what was there before. Our actions, whether great or small, will alter the shape of this planet. For me this is where some theoretical tension arises. As a species we reward creativity, but in order to be creative we have to use time, materials and labour to bring our ideas into the physical world. We have to break old things in order to make new things.

All creative processes are influenced by their context and can aim to either appease or oppose current conditions. So to re-introduce nature, is to re-introduce an idea of nature. Parks, playgrounds and town squares all inject a human idea of nature into a place. We are imposing a human response to an un-human infrastructure. Contrived and arbitrary, much like most of the architecture that surrounds it.

The very existence of planning law proves that a compromise has been made between high quality public space and financial viability. There have been provocations, but the laws that govern architecture, landscape and urban planning are deeply entrenched aspects of any country's national identity. Planning policy has to react to real-world political and commercial constraints. If a country's design requirements were too onerous, the construction industry would grind to a halt with all projects declared too onerous.

How can we decide between the public or the private, high density and low density, when the construction industry is centred around build-ability and profit margin? Planning policy is designed to hold commercial interests accountable and facilitate the creation and protection of quality built environments. Nature-dosing is one tool used to mitigate the negative impacts of development and is part of the constant push to better understand the spaces between the buildings we design.

Less of a compromise or mitigation device, nature-dosing should be seen as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the effect we have on the built environment. Every project will demand a different response to the last, we must never underestimate our potential to influence the success or failure of a project. There is potential and beauty in every structure we create. It is our job to create places that we and their future users can be proud of.