Ludo Pittie is a Director at WSP, leading WSP’s 80-strong UK Landscape and Urban Design team. He excels at collaborative innovation, strategy development and design thinking. He has driven WSP’s global exploration of ‘Future Ready Landscape’ which strives to anticipate future needs, and embeds adaptable design practices to create sustainable places that are ready for today and tomorrow. Ludo believes in championing the role of nature in the built environment and led WSP’s Biodiversity in the City initiative. His latest thought piece on nature-based placemaking explores “What if cities were more like forests?”. He supported a local authority client with successful submission of Natural Environment Investment Readiness Funding application to DEFRA/EA exploring green finance mechanisms for urban greening. He is part of the WSP team authoring the new Manual for Streets with CIHT and DfT.
Ludo is advising clients on how the role of nature-led urbanism in reshaping our towns and cities in a post-pandemic, climate and biodiversity emergency world. He led transformative masterplans like the Perth City Plan and Rochdale which led to over £500m investments. He was the design lead for Barking Riverside public realm design for 4 years, one of 10 UK’s Healthy New Town. He pioneered community-led design with the award-winning Salisbury Row Streets for People in collaboration with Southwark Council.
Ludo acted as design champion on numerous placemaking projects such as Transforming Cities Funds, Leeds Public Transport Investment Programme and Liveable Neighbourhoods. He provided design direction on National Significant Infrastructure including HS2 Old Oak Common Station, HS2 Enabling Works Phase 1 North or Aquind Interconnector. Ludo’s international experience spans from design competitions, strategic advice and design direction for clients across Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Asia.
He is a visiting lecturer in masterplanning at the “Ecole des Ingénieurs de la Ville de Paris”.