Brodie McAllister
The office is staffed with experts across design, planning and presentation. We use regular collaborators and often enter joint venture agreements with other practices to adapt and scale- to mutual benefit. Post Covid, we plan to increase further the development of digital sharing and flexible practice, exploring charging by value rather than by time alone.
Brodie McAllister is an urban and rural planner, and chartered landscape architect, who is passionate about re-defining the use of places as exciting and healthy. He is also President of the Landscape Institute.
He lives in a self-build eco home.
His designs are artistically led, and aim to engage through symbolism and the power of myth, exploring the ‘unseen’ and not just visual. Without these intangible, spiritual stories he believes you cannot have sustainable landscape design. With these stories we can engage in the cultural transformation necessary for environmental change. Using sensual clues to allegories, the imagination can be unlocked and collective dreams exercised. The effect of these myths is as good as if they were real, such is the power of the mind.
In particular, it is water as a life giving symbol that is a recurring sub-theme in his work: as historically we have buried and pushed it out, only to suffer the consequences of it coming flooding back in, we should now manage our co-existence.
HIs work includes competition winning schemes, expert witness services, historical restoration, woodland and forest management studies, site art, campus design, public parks, city squares and streetscapes, business parks, housing layouts, company headquarters, seafront and resort schemes, strategic landscape planning and masterplanning. The completed work has attracted wide publicity and awards. He has particular expertise in sustainable design technology, roof gardens and water features.
The practice emerged in London in 1993. Brodie previously practised in Singapore between 1987 and 1989 and in California between 1989 and 1993. He taught site art at the University of Gloucestershire, where he was subject group leader for environmental science, geography and landscape architecture; and has lectured widely (e.g. at Cambridge University School of Architecture, Chelsea College of Art, UWE, Greenwich and Kingston Universities) including at the Bartlett where he helped create a post graduate course in landscape design in 1996; has helped deliver short courses, e.g. living roofs for Reset Development; is a Fellow and past Vice President of the Landscape Institute; former UK representative to IFLA Europe; former trustee of the Architecture Centre (Bristol), and External Examiner at UEL. He has spoken and exhibited at many international conferences and been a juror/judge for national and international competitions, awards and prizes (including for the LI three times) as well as member of several design panels, e.g. Gloucester Heritage Urban Regeneration Company design review panel and the Creating Excellence Design Steering Group. As Chair of the built design group considering urban design issues for Thames Gateway major development sites, he set the planning conditions for schemes such as Ebbsfleet International- one of the proposed new Garden Cities.
He contributes to international and humanitarian groups such as the HLC; and edits, writes and organises debates for the online magazine, https://landscapemattersjournal.com