INTERNATIONAL
FERREXPO
T
ell me about the brief for
the project?
We were asked to come up with
a concept design initially for
what the client wanted to do with all the
waste products coming from this opencast
iron ore mine in Ukraine. Our client,
Kostyantin Zhedago, is a very unique
individual who owns Ferrexpo. His brief
was that he wanted to change the face of
open-cast mining, which has quite a lot of
negativity surrounding it, and improve the
way it is looked at.
He wanted us to come up with a concept
for what he could do with the arrisings,
the material coming out of the ground,
and how he could turn that into a positive
through a combination of landscape
architecture and land art in a way. We
used land forming to create something
that looks spectacular but also functions
as an ecological park for his workers.
Zhedago is a proud Ukrainian who says he
has a big responsibility for the project and
employs a huge amount of people.
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Landscape Insight | September 2018
How did you end being
commissioned to work on the
project?
The client flew his private jet into
Farnborough airport, which had been
designed by my partner Gilles and
included of lots of landforms. The client
liked the designed and got in contact with
us.
How big was the team working on the
project?
At the height of our work around five
people.
Tell me a bit about your history in
landscaping?
I was educated at Kingston University
and I spent most of my professional
life working for Edaw, which was an
environmental planning agency set up in
the 1930s in San Francisco.
Tell me about a bit more about open-
cast mining?
Basically it’s when you take the lid off
of everything. Particulairly for this area
the mine itself is in an area called the
Ukrainian ‘Magnetic Anomaly’, which is a
huge seam of iro n ore that runs under the
ground. The place is really bizarre, your
compass goes funny, it smells of blood
because of the iron, the water tastes of
blood and your boots go red.
With opencast mining they have to
effectively dig down 200 meters before
they actually get to the ‘good stuff’. So
they have to move an enormous amount
of material out of the ground, which has
historically been dumped in huge heaps
around the site.
So your landscape project actually
used the waste material excavated
from the mine?
The material is a combination of topsoil,
lots of subsoil and rocky substrate, which
has to be batched. It was then put down in
layers to create a series of hills across the
site, which were then dressed with subsoil
and topsoil. The hills all have these access
routes, lending the landforms a spiral like
design.
What would you say the main goal of
the projects?
I think there were three main goals.
The first was the the artistic spectacle
of the project, which was also coupled
with the second goal of improving the
environmental credentials of the scheme.
The site is located right next to the
‘Russian steppes’, otherwise known as the
great grasslands of Russia, so the project
allowed us to recreate habitats, create
water filtration systems on site. The third
goal was a genuine effort to improve the
environment for the workers and create