2025
2025
Tesserae
A layered landscape of water, play, and growth.
Portfolio
Portfolio
Second Year
Second Year
Know More
Know More
A place shaped by play, puddles and pause, Tesserae reimagines water as a material for movement, meaning and care. The project unfolds across a primary school site, where guttering, surface channels and ponds are no longer hidden but made visible, tactile, and alive.
A contour line, a downpipe, a child’s drawing.
Tesserae is a landscape design proposal developed for a primary school site, focused on reimagining water infrastructure as an active, expressive and educational element of the landscape. The project explores how layers of hydrological systems, planting, play and client engagement can be interwoven to form a unified, living environment.
The name Tesserae refers to the small pieces that make up a mosaic, symbolising how each element of the design, from guttering to children's drawings, contributes to a larger spatial narrative. The project celebrates visibility, interaction and the slow choreography of water and growth.
Tesserae began with close observation of a London primary school site - a place shaped by movement, rain and routine. Visible downpipes, sporadic planting, surface runoff, and active play spaces revealed a landscape full of latent potential. Rather than erasing the existing conditions, the project sought to work with them.
A key early step was involving the children themselves. Through a collaborative mapping workshop, pupils were invited to draw directly onto large-scale maps, showing how they moved through the space, what they did and what they wished it could become. These sketches were then translated into a set of symbolic shapes - visual codes that became part of the design’s underlying language.
Problem
Problem
The Struggle to Hold, Guide and Make Water Visible
In response to persistent surface flooding, the school’s staff have taken matters into their own hands. Without access to formal water management infrastructure, they have rerouted downpipes across the site, creating impromptu rain gardens wherever water could be redirected and absorbed. These handmade interventions, constructed with limited resources and evolving through trial and error, reflect an urgent need to cope with an overburdened landscape.
While resourceful, this reconfiguration is ultimately fragmented. The water lacks a coherent journey through the site. Some areas are oversaturated, others dry and neglected. These improvised systems are highly visible - exposed pipes, ad-hoc rain gardens, redirected flows - yet they remain largely ineffective, unaesthetic and disconnected from play, planting, or long-term ecological intent.
This tension between necessity and potential posed the central challenge of the project: How can water be better managed, more meaningfully integrated, and made visible as part of both infrastructure and imagination?
Solution
Solution
Shaping Water’s Journey, Inspired by Flow
Inspired by the work of Robert Bray, whose practice centres on making hydrological systems visible and educational, Tesserae transforms water into the site’s central design driver. Rather than diverting it underground, the project allows it to move, gather, and shape the terrain.
A layered water infrastructure is introduced:
Playful guttering becomes sculptural and accessible
Surface channels guide water gently across the site
Collection tanks hold excess rain for reuse or slow release
A central pond anchors the system, creating habitat and reflection
Planting is arranged in response to this infrastructure — thickening where water gathers, softening where children move, and evolving with the seasons. The symbolic shapes drawn by the children in the engagement workshop are reimagined as a visual code, integrated into pathways, beds, and patterns, keeping their voice embedded in the site.
Concept
Concept
A Living System of Fragments Made Whole
Tesserae offers more than a solution to flooding; it reframes water as a tool for learning, play, and ecological connection. Every component, from the smallest planting zone to the largest pond, becomes a tessera in a wider mosaic, a system of interlocking parts shaped by flow, proximity, and community.
Through the layering of infrastructure, engagement and planting, the project transforms a fragmented, reactive landscape into a living system: one that teaches, adapts, and grows. Tesserae is not just a response to water - it is a design led by it.
More Works
(TEB® — 02)
©2024
More Works
©2024
More Works
(TEB® — 02)
©2024
2025
Tesserae
A layered landscape of water, play, and growth.
Portfolio
Second Year
Know More
A place shaped by play, puddles and pause, Tesserae reimagines water as a material for movement, meaning and care. The project unfolds across a primary school site, where guttering, surface channels and ponds are no longer hidden but made visible, tactile, and alive.
A contour line, a downpipe, a child’s drawing.
Tesserae is a landscape design proposal developed for a primary school site, focused on reimagining water infrastructure as an active, expressive and educational element of the landscape. The project explores how layers of hydrological systems, planting, play and client engagement can be interwoven to form a unified, living environment.
The name Tesserae refers to the small pieces that make up a mosaic, symbolising how each element of the design, from guttering to children's drawings, contributes to a larger spatial narrative. The project celebrates visibility, interaction and the slow choreography of water and growth.
Tesserae began with close observation of a London primary school site - a place shaped by movement, rain and routine. Visible downpipes, sporadic planting, surface runoff, and active play spaces revealed a landscape full of latent potential. Rather than erasing the existing conditions, the project sought to work with them.
A key early step was involving the children themselves. Through a collaborative mapping workshop, pupils were invited to draw directly onto large-scale maps, showing how they moved through the space, what they did and what they wished it could become. These sketches were then translated into a set of symbolic shapes - visual codes that became part of the design’s underlying language.
Problem
The Struggle to Hold, Guide and Make Water Visible
In response to persistent surface flooding, the school’s staff have taken matters into their own hands. Without access to formal water management infrastructure, they have rerouted downpipes across the site, creating impromptu rain gardens wherever water could be redirected and absorbed. These handmade interventions, constructed with limited resources and evolving through trial and error, reflect an urgent need to cope with an overburdened landscape.
While resourceful, this reconfiguration is ultimately fragmented. The water lacks a coherent journey through the site. Some areas are oversaturated, others dry and neglected. These improvised systems are highly visible - exposed pipes, ad-hoc rain gardens, redirected flows - yet they remain largely ineffective, unaesthetic and disconnected from play, planting, or long-term ecological intent.
This tension between necessity and potential posed the central challenge of the project: How can water be better managed, more meaningfully integrated, and made visible as part of both infrastructure and imagination?
Solution
Shaping Water’s Journey, Inspired by Flow
Inspired by the work of Robert Bray, whose practice centres on making hydrological systems visible and educational, Tesserae transforms water into the site’s central design driver. Rather than diverting it underground, the project allows it to move, gather, and shape the terrain.
A layered water infrastructure is introduced:
Playful guttering becomes sculptural and accessible
Surface channels guide water gently across the site
Collection tanks hold excess rain for reuse or slow release
A central pond anchors the system, creating habitat and reflection
Planting is arranged in response to this infrastructure — thickening where water gathers, softening where children move, and evolving with the seasons. The symbolic shapes drawn by the children in the engagement workshop are reimagined as a visual code, integrated into pathways, beds, and patterns, keeping their voice embedded in the site.
Concept
A Living System of Fragments Made Whole
Tesserae offers more than a solution to flooding; it reframes water as a tool for learning, play, and ecological connection. Every component, from the smallest planting zone to the largest pond, becomes a tessera in a wider mosaic, a system of interlocking parts shaped by flow, proximity, and community.
Through the layering of infrastructure, engagement and planting, the project transforms a fragmented, reactive landscape into a living system: one that teaches, adapts, and grows. Tesserae is not just a response to water - it is a design led by it.
More Works
(TEB® — 02)
©2024
2025
Tesserae
A layered landscape of water, play, and growth.
Portfolio
Second Year
Know More
A place shaped by play, puddles and pause, Tesserae reimagines water as a material for movement, meaning and care. The project unfolds across a primary school site, where guttering, surface channels and ponds are no longer hidden but made visible, tactile, and alive.
A contour line, a downpipe, a child’s drawing.
Tesserae is a landscape design proposal developed for a primary school site, focused on reimagining water infrastructure as an active, expressive and educational element of the landscape. The project explores how layers of hydrological systems, planting, play and client engagement can be interwoven to form a unified, living environment.
The name Tesserae refers to the small pieces that make up a mosaic, symbolising how each element of the design, from guttering to children's drawings, contributes to a larger spatial narrative. The project celebrates visibility, interaction and the slow choreography of water and growth.
Tesserae began with close observation of a London primary school site - a place shaped by movement, rain and routine. Visible downpipes, sporadic planting, surface runoff, and active play spaces revealed a landscape full of latent potential. Rather than erasing the existing conditions, the project sought to work with them.
A key early step was involving the children themselves. Through a collaborative mapping workshop, pupils were invited to draw directly onto large-scale maps, showing how they moved through the space, what they did and what they wished it could become. These sketches were then translated into a set of symbolic shapes - visual codes that became part of the design’s underlying language.
Problem
The Struggle to Hold, Guide and Make Water Visible
In response to persistent surface flooding, the school’s staff have taken matters into their own hands. Without access to formal water management infrastructure, they have rerouted downpipes across the site, creating impromptu rain gardens wherever water could be redirected and absorbed. These handmade interventions, constructed with limited resources and evolving through trial and error, reflect an urgent need to cope with an overburdened landscape.
While resourceful, this reconfiguration is ultimately fragmented. The water lacks a coherent journey through the site. Some areas are oversaturated, others dry and neglected. These improvised systems are highly visible - exposed pipes, ad-hoc rain gardens, redirected flows - yet they remain largely ineffective, unaesthetic and disconnected from play, planting, or long-term ecological intent.
This tension between necessity and potential posed the central challenge of the project: How can water be better managed, more meaningfully integrated, and made visible as part of both infrastructure and imagination?
Solution
Shaping Water’s Journey, Inspired by Flow
Inspired by the work of Robert Bray, whose practice centres on making hydrological systems visible and educational, Tesserae transforms water into the site’s central design driver. Rather than diverting it underground, the project allows it to move, gather, and shape the terrain.
A layered water infrastructure is introduced:
Playful guttering becomes sculptural and accessible
Surface channels guide water gently across the site
Collection tanks hold excess rain for reuse or slow release
A central pond anchors the system, creating habitat and reflection
Planting is arranged in response to this infrastructure — thickening where water gathers, softening where children move, and evolving with the seasons. The symbolic shapes drawn by the children in the engagement workshop are reimagined as a visual code, integrated into pathways, beds, and patterns, keeping their voice embedded in the site.
Concept
A Living System of Fragments Made Whole
Tesserae offers more than a solution to flooding; it reframes water as a tool for learning, play, and ecological connection. Every component, from the smallest planting zone to the largest pond, becomes a tessera in a wider mosaic, a system of interlocking parts shaped by flow, proximity, and community.
Through the layering of infrastructure, engagement and planting, the project transforms a fragmented, reactive landscape into a living system: one that teaches, adapts, and grows. Tesserae is not just a response to water - it is a design led by it.
More Works
©2024