Tom Stuart-Smith is perhaps best known for creating some of the most beautiful private gardens of the 21st century. But tonight he will share his lifelong passion for designing for the public realm, from King’s Cross to Marrakech.
This lecture, the first Tom has dedicated to this theme, coincides with the opening of the new public garden at The Hepworth Wakefield, which his practice was appointed to design after winning a national competition in 2015. Adjacent to the award-winning gallery by Sir David Chipperfield, The Hepworth Wakefield Garden is an opportunity to transform an empty grass lot into a vibrant garden which will form a link between the gallery and the redeveloped Victorian Rutland Mills buildings, all situated on the banks of the River Calder.
Revealing how he approaches sharing his design values with a wide audience, Tom will discuss projects both past and present, including RHS Bridgewater, Le Jardin Secret in Marrakech and public spaces in Whitechapel and King’s Cross.
He will also give an exclusive preview of two projects in France in collaboration with Studio Mumbai: a famous winery being rebuilt with visitor experience in mind, and a former convent in Nice recast as a hotel with a public market at its centre.
Tom Stuart-Smith
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Bio
Bio
Tom Stuart-Smith is a landscape architect whose work is characterised by strong contrasts between built form and naturalistic planting. Tom read Zoology at Cambridge before completing a postgraduate degree in Landscape Design at the University of Manchester. He worked for several years at Hal Moggridge and Elizabeth Banks Associates before setting up his own practice in London in 1998.
Tom has since designed parks, gardens and landscapes throughout Europe, India, USA and Caribbean. Significant projects in the public domain have included the Queen's Jubilee garden at Windsor Castle to mark the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Trentham Gardens in Staffordshire, the Bicentenary Glasshouse Garden at Wisley for the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and on a smaller scale, the Keepers House Garden at the Royal Academy of Arts. International projects have included Le Jardin Secret in the heart of the Medina in Marrakech, a garden located on the waterways near Kottayam in Kerala, India, and a show garden for the international horticulture exhibition at IGA Berlin 2017.
Current projects include a garden square at King’s Cross in London for Argent LLP and the Aga Khan Foundation, several projects at Chatsworth, a garden for the Scottish baronial estate of Aldourie Castle, a new public garden at the Hepworth Gallery Wakefield, and the masterplan for the RHS’s gardens at Bridgewater (near Salford) which is the largest new garden project in the UK.