AT chats to Emma McNicholas and Chris Shiels, directors at Studio Oobe – one of a select band of landscape architects who have taken part in the 2025 Regenerative Architecture Index.

Oobe worked alongside Stallan Brand to develop the primary public space at the heart of Barclays Campus and riverside promenade development in Glasgow. Designed to be as multifunctional as possible, the space includes areas for film screenings, street food markets and social events. (Credit: BDP)

Why OOBE?
Technically it’s an acronym. It stands for out-of-body experience. We found it on an album cover, but we don’t generally use it. We looked at a few different options, and we like the way the two o’s look side-by-side. And the domain name was available, which is always a plus. We had our 15^th anniversary this April, so it’s served us pretty well.

How did you celebrate?
We did have ambitions to have a big party, but it all got a bit complicated because we’re split between Newcastle and Edinburgh, so you have to decide who has to do the travelling and who you invite from where. But it was a good opportunity to think about where we’re going and what we’ve done. We’ve just set our 5-year plan.

What’s in the plana?
We really want to keep our existing clients happy – 80% of our workload comes from existing clients. We’re Our ethos is all about people and the environment and really getting the balance right between the two, so we’re doing a lot of work with clients on helping them to focus on their ESG goals. We’re really pushing the sustainability side, and actually, we have been from the start. It’s ingrained in what we do. And of course we want to find new clients, and really push the brand out. Ideally, we’d like more really large-scale projects. We don’t just do landscape, we do urban design and masterplanning too, so we can really add value when there are major projects that we help to shape at the earliest stages, and then really get our teeth into over five or six years. In terms of additional services, we’ve been looking at adding ecologists and a landscape planning person to our team. We’ve got 23 staff at the moment, we’d like to be at around the 50 mark in five years time. But that all depends on the economy. Let’s see where we end up.

Have you got any plans to set up shop down south?
We’re true northerners. We’ve got projects in Cornwall, Inverness, Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds. And of course and there’s loads of stuff going on all across the UK. But we like being based where we are. We did have an office in London, but we closed it down during Covid. It just wasn’t working for us.  And we love working in Scotland. Scotland is a lot more progressive than England in terms of sustainability. Unbelieveably so. It’s really refreshing. The planning policies are much better for landscape. In Glasgow there’s a lot of emphasis on landscape and biodiversity.  Edinburgh has this amazing landscape officer called Julie Waldron. Everybody listens to her. It’s amazing how often you hear the words “I’ll have to speak to Julie about that.”