South Leeds Memorial Woodland

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Memento Mori - Remember Your Mortality

The memorial woodland is conceived as a new framework for urban strategies. It is a tool for implementing a new landscape throughout the south of Leeds to improve current derelict sites and link areas together.
With the woodland comprising of trees planted in memory it will give a greater depth to the landscape with memories and stories being stored within the ground for people to visit, ponder and exchange.
Death is often seen as a taboo subject which is avoided at all costs. However, without death life would be meaningless as there would be no individual moments, everything would be a copy of something that has happened before it. It would carry a message that life should be embraced rather than spectated and the memorial woodland will act as a journey of life through to death which will link through a series of amenities representing that.

Within Holbeck services such as education centres, community and youth centres, sports facilities and art and music facilities will provide a lively hub for the woodland to thrive and influence social contact between residents of each area.

Travelling further through the woodland a wellness centre and hospice will be implemented within Cross Flats Park. A more serene feeling will be created within cross flats as a more relaxed environment with greenhouses and slower paced sports facilities. It is through these facilities that public engagement will be influenced whilst also including those within each centre to feel included within the community.
At the end of the woodland where it meets Middleton Park will be a promatorium and garden centre, signifying the end of the green link and also the end of a lives journey through the landscape.
It is from the promatorium that the woodland will spread re linking the final stages of the woodland to the beginning creating a birth-death-rebirth ideal to the woodland.

Woodland Evolution

Throughout the landscape of the masterplan a woodl;and will be created with pockets of open spaces and services which will apply to the analysis results from above.

The woodland will grow, adapt and change over time as more and more trees and plants are planted throughout the area. With varying ages of trees within the vicinity of each other a greater diversity of woodland will be able to strive.

After a tree has been growing for around 12 years, it will be coppiced. This is cutting it down just above ground level. By doing this not only does it allow extra light into that part of the forest, it also means that the tree will live for a longer period of time than if it were left alone.

By doing this different areas of the woodland will experience different wildlife and woodland growth throughout its years meaning that one area can only be at a certain stage or state once in its lifetime. Not only does this allow for an ever different experience throughout the woodland, it also looks at lifespan and how precious experience really is.

The images to the left illustrate the changing scene of the woodland over time, from the first planting to the second batch of coppicing within the woodland.