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FEATURED EPISODE

Episode 13: Think Brick with Will Whitfeld

Interviews

Will Whitfeld from OCULUS

15/02/2021

Will Whitfeld is a Senior Landscape Architect at OCULUS. His skills include master planning; design development, documentation, digital 3D, BIM (Revit) and graphic presentation. He is interested in the influence of natural and designed spaces on human behaviour, and people's connection to their environment. Having completed a Master of Environmental Psychology in 2014, Will’s landscape architecture practice is highly people-focused.

OCULUS won the Bruce Mackenzie Landscape award in 2020 with DKO Architecture and Breathe Architecture with their alluring project Arkadia Apartments. The Arkadia Apartment development set a new benchmark in how a multi-residential projects can foster community, social interaction, and neighbourhood integration through a collaborative design process - highly reflecting Wills' design practice.

In this episode, your host Elizabeth McIntyre will chat with Will Whitfeld to explore how his unique upbringing of living between farm and garden effected his outlook of landscape architecture and how people and place interact with each other.

Listen to the full episode to discover more of the following:

Will's very first venture into landscape architecture at 6 years of age on his parents farm;
Prospect and refuge theory - and how it influences the understanding of landscape architects;
Working with Ryde Council in his early years of university and how this gave him insight into the interaction between public and private spaces;
How Will's gap year gave him a fresh perspective on landscape architecture in different environments;
Creating functional spaces accessible to everyone and the challenges within that - specifically in a time of a pandemic;
Insight into the design and thought process behind the winning project Arkadia (Bruce Mackenzie Landscape award 2020 Think Brick Awards);
The diversity and benefits of using brick and more specifically recycled brick in his projects;
Individual responses to landscapes
How landscapes intertwine with plant life
The connection between plants and people and how this can help with certain medical conditions and furthermore how Will has explored and implemented this into his architectural work;
The importance of sense of place and the connection and influence it has on people.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Bruce Mackenzie Landscape Award

Think Brick Awards

Prospect and Refuge Theory

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