Diving into 2024

2023 was another big year of growth for Uncommon Land, now Benoy Landscape Architecture. The London and Singapore offices expanded in terms of staff and strategic hires, with London increasing its head count from 15 to 23 over the last 12 months, and Singapore and Hong Kong expanding from 5 to 13 people. By the second half of 2024 globally we stand to have over 40 staff, representing over 16 different nationalities.

People

We continue to celebrate homegrown talent with a number of key promotions announced in our London team. Angus Palmer was promoted to Director of the London studio, Annamari Comrie promoted to Associate Director and Francesca Farrugia promoted to Senior Landscape Architect.

We have also seen new hires in both the London, Singapore and Hong Kong studios. In London Tugyan Kepkep, Senna Subbiah and Kamonchanok Srisaovanant joined as Senior Landscape Architects, and in February, we look forward to the arrival of a new Senior Urban Designer to help coordinate the growing public realm and open space masterplan work we are doing.

In Asia, Victor Kuan and Yini Zhang joined our Singapore and Hong Kong Studios respectively as Senior Landscape Architects.

Projects

Our projects continue to grow in terms of scale, complexities, scope and geographies. Public realm and commercial mixed-use projects remain our core focus, alongside masterplan work, hospitality, ecological, retail, streetscapes and guidelines work. We also have projects currently under construction such as the Solitaire development in Riyadh which has recently being shortlisted for the Retail & Leisure International MENA Most Anticipated Opening Award for 2024. Elsewhere, we are close to wrapping up construction packages for marquee projects that we hope to be able to announce in the coming months.

New initiatives

Our Sustainability framework was developed in the first half of 2023 and is now being thoroughly applied to all our projects. This has been further enhanced with a focus on applying climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation means and interventions to projects.

We also saw new initiatives take shape, such as the Urban Design Think Tank in London; a symposium that sees us coming together over drinks to discuss topics around urban design, landscape architecture, masterplanning and urban planning.

Our digital presence also grew in 2023 with close to 5k followers gained collectively on Linkedin and Instagram. This has also been aided by our partnership with World Landscape Architecture who we will look to work with more in 2024 under the name of Benoy Landscape Architecture.

Looking ahead to 2024

Uncommon Land began a new chapter at the start of January joining our sister company Benoy to form the business group Benoy Landscape Architecture. Since 2018, Uncommon Land has been part of the Handley House group which also owns Benoy and Pragma. Six years on, we believe a combined offering will make us the design studio of choice for the built environment. Together, we will draw on Benoy’s global network of designers and thought leaders, whilst continuing to offer our specialist skills in landscape architecture and urban design.

2024 stands to be a promising year with exciting projects continuing, and new projects starting. All studios have new starters joining in the next month to expand on our rich and diverse skill set, while we also look to expand our work and portfolio into familiar or new global regions. We typically work through all design stages, from visioning, masterplan, guidelines, concept, schematic, through to construction documentation.

If you’re planning a project in the UK or further afield whether you are in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East or Asia Pacific, we’d love to hear from you.