Two postgraduates share their success stories

Rebekah Russell and Kimberley Chamberlain, both based in our Manchester studio, have successfully completed their respective Masters degrees in Urban Design and GIS, whilst working at Gillespies.

They provide a detailed overview of their dissertation and explain why working for Gillespies has been beneficial to their degrees.    

Rebekah Russell, Urban Designer – MA (Merit) Urban Design

• Degree: MA Urban Design, Leeds Beckett University
• Dissertation: The Adapted Garden City Model

Working for Gillespies whilst studying has given me practical experience and awareness whilst my degree has allowed me to strengthen my creativity and knowledge of urban design.

Garden Cities is a topic I’ve been interested in since my undergraduate studies and I wanted to explore how the concept and design principles could be adapted for the 21st century. The original Garden City concept consisted of distinctly separate land uses, however nowadays we don’t need such distinct zones. I explored how neighbourhoods can have the connectivity and amenities to enable most workers to do just as good of a job at home as they would in a city-centre office. An adapted garden city model allows us to build communities with a much more effective use of space, where residential, commercial and green infrastructure is intermixed, and sustainable transport routes and resources are focused locally.

I am able to transfer this knowledge to current projects I am working on with Gillespies, including being involved in the masterplanning for a Garden Village in Carlisle, which I am especially excited about.   

Kimberley Chamberlin, GIS Technician - MA (Distinction) GIS

• Degree: MSc Geographical Information Science, University of Manchester
• Dissertation: Designing an algorithm for a batch viewshed tool

Working for Gillespies whilst studying for my Master’s degree has been hugely beneficial in more ways than one. Utilising the skills and knowledge gained on the course in practice has enabled me to develop a greater understanding of how GIS can be applied in the workplace. It has also helped me to gain confidence in my own ability, encouraging me to push the boundaries.

Through personal experience, it became clear that tasks are often required to be repeated numerous times through the stages of a design. In terms of GIS this can often result in laborious and time-consuming processes, such as the creation of multiple viewsheds (or Zones of Theoretical Visibility) for a proposed overhead line. In an effort to make this particular process more efficient and less costly, and because existing GIS tools only allow one viewshed to be created at a time, I decided to design an algorithm for the batch production of viewsheds. This then formed the basis of my dissertation and, through consultation with professionals within the Landscape and Planning industry, led to the creation of a user-friendly tool that automates the process of creating a viewshed, for non-specialist use.