One Day in the Life of…

Thoughts and musings

One Day in the Life of…

Lewis | February 19, 2015 | 0 Comments

…a landscape architect!

If you expected the name “Ivan Denisovich”, the I do apologise! My writing may not be as good as Solzhenitsyn, but I’ll give it a go! Where the subject of the Russian novelist’s critically-acclaimed novel – which helped him win the Nobel Prize for Literature – was the aforementioned Ivan, this blog post will focus on one of our own: Oakleigh Manor’s leading landscape architect Rupert Davis.

Just like Solzhenitsyn’s novel, this little piece of literature will focus on – you guessed it – one day in the life of Rupert. From my untrained eyes, I previously believed landscape architects are paid to simply draw, but my colleague tells me it’s much more than that, and no where near as exciting! I am paraphrasing, but due to his working days being so varied, he could be doing anything, but Rupert tells me that while a typical day will always involve time spent at the drawing board, there is also a lot of bureaucracy to his job; a lot of paperwork to complete and emails to reply to. He could even be on site, visiting a client. Now wonder he’s so tired after a day’s work!

However, Rupert is our leading landscape architect for a reason. He implores that due to his vigorous and lengthy design process, where he will meet with a client numerous times during a project’s length, the final design will always be the right design for the client. Mr Davis also says that without this process, there will be problems, such as disputes about design. But he is far too experienced to fall victim.

He studied at the University of Manchester during the 1990s, where he was for five years. It took a further two years for Rupert to earn his “stripes”, if you like, to become a fully-fledged Chartered landscape architect. Despite being great at what he does, he is very plain-spoken, and says he “fell into his role”; his careers master at school recommended it would be a good avenue of work for him! Not a bad “accident” if you ask me; he’s more than apt in his role. However, Rupert feels he would be working in some sort of design element either way, as he loves to be practical, is good at drawing, and sees designing as finding a solution to a problem, something he has become an expert in.

He’s a very interesting guy, and it’s an honour to work in the same office as such a talented individual.