A S P E C T Landscape Architecture
Creating sustainable & contemporary solutions, liveable spaces for people, healthy & resilient environments with sustained habitat for flora & fauna
Montclare Place, Claremont
This development is located along a commercial strip & an activity corridor in Claremont, Cape Town.
The original site housed a hospital & the structure was reconfigured to a multilevel commercial node with gym, grocery & health stores, multilevel parking & residential units.
As often is the case with developments of this nature, there were existing mature Ficus sp. trees in very good condition and part of the condition of approval for the development was the protection and retention of the existing trees.
The original tree location were not considered as optimal by the developer and the process of investigating tree relocation and alternative positions was followed. An agreement was reached between the developer and the local authority and certain identified trees were relocated to the perimeter of the site. This was a relatively successful process however, over time and after handover of the project, the relocated trees remained under pressure from development and have been trimmed to varying degrees due to requirements for views, ease of building maintenance and other issues.
As may be seen in the aerial image below, mitigating the profound impact of large scale developments in an urban context remains a challenge as green infrastructure has generally been considered less favorable, “soft” elements that were not able to complete with the floor area ratio’s and other calculations that support built infrastructure
