Symbiotic Landscape｜A Story of Soil, Water, and Beaver Wetlands
This project is based in Cleator Moor, Cumbria—a rural town on the edge of the Lake District’s tourism zone, yet facing economic and social stagnation.
The River Ehen, rising from Ennerdale Water in the Lake District National Park, holds national ecological importance as the habitat for 90% of England’s remaining freshwater pearl mussels. Despite its designation as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) , the surrounding landscape faces silent yet urgent threats. Decades of grazing and land management in the upstream catchment have led to soil compaction, nutrient loss, and hydrological instability. Though the river currently meets “good” water quality standards, the condition of its source land raises critical questions: will current practices protect this habitat, or hasten its decline?
The project explores how soil and water systems can support both ecological restoration and community renewal.
The design framework responds through three interlinked strategies:
1. Improving grazing land with herbal leys, to initiate soil restoration and water filtration.
2. Reintroducing beavers, whose natural engineering forms wetlands, slows floods, and creates dynamic habitats.
3. Designing seasonal trails and education centre, reconnecting people to ecological change and rural heritage.
By rewilding degraded pasture through soil recovery and beaver reintroduction, the design enables habitat succession within a guided ecological framework. Over time, the landscape becomes a shared system, where nature and people adapt, regenerate, and grow together.
