Alistair Kirkpatrick is a co-director of AKAS Landscape Architecture. He has a background in horticulture and lectures in the landscape architecture program at RMIT University, specializing in new ecologies and planting design.
Alistair Kirkpatrick's Latest contributions
Suburban refuge: Designing for biodiversity in our cities
How does increasing density affect our suburban ecologies – and what small interventions can make a meaningful difference?
Laying the groundwork for soil
Simon Leake, Australia’s pre-eminent soil expert, calls for landscape management practices that let soil function and evolve.
Planting the agenda
What principles might landscape architects embrace to reclaim agency when designing with plants? Alistair Kirkpatrick explores three possibilities: collaboration, advocacy and opportunity.
Designing with urban soils
Healthy soils are critical to plant growth, but modern building practices often destroy soil through compaction, contamination and destruction of fungal and microbial communities. What can landscape architects do about it?
Designing for novel ecologies
By acknowledging human agency as a vector for plants and animals, we can begin to embrace new and fertile ways of working with our environment.
Designing with ecological succession
Ecological succession – where colonizer plant species grow quickly to provide organic matter, shelter and nutrients to their longer-lived neighbours – is rarely employed in planting schemes, but it holds great potential to produce more interesting, dynamic and resilient landscapes.
Questioning the war on weeds in urban streetscapes
Should weeds be embraced in built-up urban environments to provide resilient plantings that can thrive in the toughest conditions?
