Let's Work Together

PLACE BASED ASSESSEMENT: Imagining Sustainable Swim Spaces in North Dublin

/ Christine Mullan-Jensen

For the last two years Repsychable has collaborated with UCD’s 2nd-year Landscape Architecture students on a hypothetical design incorporating an environmental psychology perspective. This year the students were tasked with an experimental 8-week project on a hypothetical site in a North Co. Dublin coastal town. It had a somewhat complex remit between railway infrastructure and a flood plain site which challenged them to create some adventurous ideas and solutions in smaller groups. The students visited the town at the outset of the project and Repsychable attended to contextualise the psychological factors to account for in their environmental approaches.

Problem

The remit was 1) to design a public amenity building, such as a public swimming pool and 2) to ensure that the landscape and new building would provide a transition between townscape & rural typology. Crucially, it also had to ensure alignment with a very active community that is working hard to protect its environment. The landscape development needed to happen in a sensitive and sustainable manner which met the wishes and needs of residents in the town. While there were many structural components to consider, the remit for Repsychable was to inform the teams about the various community and psychological aspects to build into their research and planning. As noted in their brief: “The challenge in urban planning is to place buildings suitable for the landscape and to care for the spaces in-between the buildings, so they have proportions which are comfortable and accommodate the needs of the residents and visiting populations”.

Success

Repsychable returned at the end of the project for the exhibition and review where each team presented their ideas over the course of a day. Ten different teams had to demonstrate 1) research skills & critical thinking, 2) site context, topography, spatial design & access, 3) site vegetation, water & landscape approaches and 4) Graphic & Verbal communication.

The collective imaginary across the presentations created a compelling look into future landscape design with swales, re-usable materials, sensory gardens, community farms, pollinator-friendly planting, new open spaces, new sustainable transport options, working with water rather than against it, better accessibility and wayfinding through art trails and much more.

One of the presentations was particularly striking for its theoretical approach. It outlined how many design aspects were inter-related to the SDGs. When mapped together and if well analysed, they revealed a win-win for the people in the town (who would greatly benefit from a new swimming pool and blended landscape) as well as for the ecologically-sensitive developmental changes that were necessary while also meeting the economical pillar of sustainable development.

Building bridges between environmental psychology and the built and natural environment

Typically environmental psychologists have not been at the table in collaborative processes like these in Ireland. Greater links between environmental psychology and the built and natural environment is an important keystone for future work just as in other countries. Landscape architecture is an increasingly important discipline as we soften how we develop our buildings within a changing landscape prone to flooding and many other extreme weather events.

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