Ross Robson

The megastructure at Cumbernauld Town Centre represents polemical town planning concepts that blur the boundary between building and city. It features all of the functional requirements of the town in one building. Situated Landscapes explores concepts of an integrated architectural landscape. As a rejection of the binary notion that the urban condition is made up of entities that are either considered object or landscape, the project asks to what extent can objects be landscape, and landscapes be objects, rejecting the building vis-a-vis the plot. To create an ambiguity between object and landscape, building or city, and explore the possible urban and architectural proposals as a result. To put architecture vis-a-vis landscape.

The project hypothesises that the architecture was not at fault in the megastructures demise, but its landscape. The perspective of this polemical piece of architecture and urban design is flipped. Focusing on landscape, not object. Architectural studies of landform, morphology, space, material, urban strategy informed  a volumetric landscape of varying heights, densities, and use.  Situated Landscape as a new type of city designed as a system for inhabiting peripheral landscapes. With this holistic process, it is possible to reject conventional binary conditions and to stop placing landscape and building in opposition with each other. Finally consolidating a landscape that is worthy of the megastructure.