Finding its genesis in the theories of place attachment and biophilia, this project aims to encourage a sense of stewardship towards the Ardeer peninsula, the former site of the Nobel dynamite factory in Ayrshire. Since the factory’s closure in the late twentieth century, the landscape has become the focus of great hostility and stigmatisation as it symbolises the decline of the local economy. This project approaches this stigmatisation head on by exploring the experiences of the local community through memory mapping exercises, using this to build a framework which aims to use these negative emotions to inform positive reattachment and integration with the landscape.


This idea is explored further in ‘The Unforgetting’ - a landscape led therapy programme which encourages participants to overcome their prejudice towards the landscape through a four stage programme based upon a psychotherapeutic relationship. The focus on memories is not only relevant to place attachment, rather it is essential in understanding the patterns of neglect within the relationship between the community and the Ardeer peninsula, and how to break these patterns. One way to do this is to reinforce a sense of understanding and reciprocity within the relationship, which is portrayed in this project as the creation of an empathetic landscape. The selected work highlights some of the key elements of the project which uses both theoretical and physical design interventions to create empathy within the landscape. This is done mainly through the flooding of the peninsula, using industrial ruins as vessels in which water is held, moved, meandered, and released.

Helen A Rose prize for best student (ESALA)