In partnership with Kossmann.dejong Exhibition Architects and Felixx, a Dutch landscape architecture firm, Nomad Studio participated in Canterbury Cathedral’s Landscape Design Competition. The team was shortlisted as one of only five teams, and the only non U.K.-based team, to develop concept designs for the Cathedral’s Precincts.

Our approach to interpretation was two-fold. First, we proposed a series of landscape and art installations. Through paved mosaics, story gardens, and sculptural elements we sought to use more nontraditional forms of interpretation to evoke the cathedral’s storied past and to create comfortable, welcoming spaces for reflection, as well as for gathering and discussion. With this, we proposed an audio tour that focused on the personal stories of 24 different people, just as in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Some of these people included the Archbishop of Canterbury, a historian, a theologian, an architect, an English pilgrim, a foreign pilgrim, a stone carver (busy on the Cathedral for almost 30 years), a gardener, and an archaeologist.