Living Quarry
World Landscape Architecture, Award of Execllence
Concept: Analysis and Planning Category
The Living Quarry project by epd is a recipient of the prestigious WLA concept analysis award, recognized for excellence in world landscape architecture award analysis planning. Designed as a comprehensive quarry restoration landscape masterplan, the scheme seamlessly integrates environmental planning, habitat creation, and public access strategy.
The quarry is positioned as a regenerative node, reconnecting fragmented ecological networks, restoring hydrological systems, and linking surrounding landscapes into a resilient green infrastructure.
The appraisal positions Bradmore Ridge in direct relation to Highweek Quarry, linking surrounding neighbourhoods, proposed housing, and designated landscapes. The quarry is identified as both a source of ecological disruption and a key opportunity for regeneration. As a transitional zone, the site enables reconnection of fragmented landscapes and restoration of ecological continuity.
The quarry landscape evolved from dispersed small-scale clay pits into an extensive industrial extraction system driven by post-war expansion and mechanization. This transformation progressively reshaped the terrain, resulting in widespread landform alteration, ecological fragmentation, and disrupted hydrological systems that underpin the need for regeneration.
The masterplan integrates the ridge, agricultural land, settlements, and quarry into a cohesive landscape system structured by hydrology and ecological succession. It transforms the quarry into a regenerative core while strengthening connectivity, biodiversity, and community access across the wider landscape.
The masterplan integrates ridge, farmland, settlements, and quarry into a cohesive landscape shaped by hydrology, ecological succession, and water purification. Runoff is intercepted, slowed, and filtered through wetland systems, transforming the quarry into a regenerative core that improves water quality, enhances biodiversity, and strengthens connectivity and access.
Water movement shapes landform, drives ecological succession, and supports long-term landscape resilience.
