urban
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Urban Desing Brochure including our skills and experienceTRANSCRIPT
Urban
nashpartnership
Coed Darcy MasterplanSummary of Workshop LayoutDo not Scale (approx 1:2500 at A0)
January 20087132 (SK) 011
L 1
L2
L3
L4
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MUGA
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Secondary School
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Playing Field
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Scale
0 50 100 150 200 250
Coed Darcy Masterplan
Commercial area
Community buildings
Commercial area
Community buildings
Highstreet 1
Sq 1
Highstr
eet 2
Square 2
AP
Changing
Commercial area as built
Dwelling block
Commercial/retail
Community buildings
Schools
Commercial/Employment
Open space/playing fields
Open space/trees planting
Boulevards streets
Urban Squares
Swales
Introduction
Nash Partnership was established in 1988 around a body of work involving the conservation of historic buildings and development affecting sensitive areas. The experience we gained in evaluating the past and assessing the impacts of change led over our early years to projects involving the re-use of brownfield land or large historic buildings, and exposure to the wide range of technical issues that complex sites invariably raise such as contamination, flooding, wildlife issues, vehicular access, archaeology, etc.
In recent years we have found the wide range of our professional experience (reflected in the specialist staff within our team) and familiarity with the evaluation of sites and design options has led to an increasing amount of work coming to us under the heading of Masterplanning and Urban Design. Much of this arises from the Government’s Sustainable Communities Programme where public sector land is released to developers prepared to compete on their standards of sustainable design and construction.
In this short document we illustrate the range of some of our recent work in this field.
Our Urban Design Team located within our Sydney Buildings office in the World Heritage City of Bath is led by the Senior Partner, Edward Nash and Urban Design Director, Amanda Taylor.
Locking Parklands, Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset
Working for our clients, St Modwen Properties Plc our Masterplan proposals for the re-use of this 100ha former military base have been selected to proceed by English Partnerships, delivering the Government’s Sustainable Communities Programme in the southwest of England. RAF Locking has been allocated for mixed use development in the LDF and Structure Plan process in order to redress Weston Super Mare’s chronic shortage of employment. The town has long served as a dormitory for Bristol and a place for retirement and holidays. But now the aim is to recover some of the 20,000 commuters who travel to Bristol each day, mostly by car.
So the Locking Masterplan is strongly employment led and aims to deliver a million square feet of floorspace, much having to be in place before new housing is allowed. The plan has had to consider carefully how new employers and employees can be attracted to Weston and creating options for first time property ownership on the site will be part of this. Although serving Weston, the project site is relatively self contained, considerable emphasis will be given to monitoring and managing how it develops as a balanced community in terms of its quality of life, sourcing of its building materials, its handling of its waste, how its energy is generated and how it interfaces with surrounding communities and the natural environment.
Our Masterplan sets out to convey how a high quality of living and working environment can be provided on a relatively virgin site.
Kingston Mills, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
When the large complex of rubber mills that were the heart of this historic Wiltshire town closed in 1992 a history of several hundred years of manufacturing came to an end with a loss of 700 jobs. The site’s future remained wholly in doubt until we were appointed in 2003 to develop a viable strategy for it. For a period of five years, working with several of the town’s community groups, The Prince of Wales Foundation for the Built Environment, statutory consultees and planning organisations and three development clients we have secured planning permission to bring a wide range of new uses to this important site at the very heart of the town.
The scheme will restore ten historic industrial buildings and create 170 dwellings, shops, a convenience store, restaurants, offices, workshops and the community facility. The site has been especially challenging for a host of technical reasons, a high incidence of flooding, contamination, significant wildlife interest, very poor access, air quality and noise concerns and the extreme design sensitivity of a site sandwiched between a Grade I Listed Building and a scheduled Ancient Monument and exposed to wide ranging river views.
Kingston Mills has demonstrated well the close integration of design awareness, public consultation and planning consultation Nash are now skilled in achieving. We have been engaged to take to construction of all areas of this £35 million construction project over the next three years.
Coed Darcy MasterplanSummary of Workshop LayoutDo not Scale (approx 1:2500 at A0)
January 20087132 (SK) 011
L 1
L2
L3
L4
L5
L6
L7
L8
L9L10
L11
N1
N2
MUGA
P1
P2
P3
Secondary School
F1
F2
F3
F4
Playing Field
R1
R2
C1
C2
B1
B2T
Scale
0 50 100 150 200 250
Coed Darcy Masterplan
Commercial area
Community buildings
Commercial area
Community buildings
Highstreet 1
Sq 1
Highstr
eet 2
Square 2
AP
Changing
Commercial area as built
Dwelling block
Commercial/retail
Community buildings
Schools
Commercial/Employment
Open space/playing fields
Open space/trees planting
Boulevards streets
Urban Squares
Swales
Coed Darcy MasterplanSummary of Workshop LayoutDo not Scale (approx 1:2500 at A0)
January 20087132 (SK) 011
L 1
L2
L3
L4
L5
L6
L7
L8
L9L10
L11
N1
N2
MUGA
P1
P2
P3
Secondary School
F1
F2
F3
F4
Playing Field
R1
R2
C1
C2
B1
B2T
Scale
0 50 100 150 200 250
Coed Darcy Masterplan
Commercial area
Community buildings
Commercial area
Community buildings
Highstreet 1
Sq 1
Highstr
eet 2
Square 2
AP
Changing
Commercial area as built
Dwelling block
Commercial/retail
Community buildings
Schools
Commercial/Employment
Open space/playing fields
Open space/trees planting
Boulevards streets
Urban Squares
Swales
Coed Darcy
The former Llandarcy Oil Refinery, between Neath and Swansea, has been described in its Environmental Impact Assessment as the largest single regeneration project in Europe. It involves a site of approaching 1000 acres flanking the largest fenland bog in Wales, an SSSI and European Wildlife Site. The refinery closed in 1997 and the entire site has to be remediated before redevelopment can be expected to occur, over a twenty year period.
Nash Partnership was appointed in 2007 to review and develop the sitewide Masterplan. We are working with the Prince of Wales Foundation and the infrastructure developer, St Modwen to prepare the site for land disposals. The Welsh Assembly Government has high expectations for sustainability throughout the project and aspire to achieve carbon neutrality on such a flagship scheme for all work done after 2011. The Masterplan and Town Code are challenged by the steep and varied topography of the site and its relationship with the Crymlyn Bog, the largest of its kind in the Principality. This is a remarkably unspoilt natural feature which will form the foreground to many views of the development, demanding carefully considered strategies for landscape within the site for views in and out. Alongside the Masterplan we need to prepare a Town Design Code to address many of the design and public realm issues that arise from forming streets, roads and public open space on such marked topography, ensure good use of local materials, the development of indigenous construction skills. The Town Code can also set the sustainability agenda in areas beyond the control of the Building Regulations.
The New Bournville Village Centre, Lightmoor, Telford
The Lightmoor District is the last zone of the Telford New Town (first designated in 1960s) to be brought to completion. It is being promoted as a development through a collaboration of English Partnerships and the Charitable Bournville Village Trust who manage the model settlement first established by George Cadbury at the start of the 20th century.
Working for local developers, Shropshire Homes, our scheme for the village centre sought to recognise the settlement patterns that characterised the era of the industrial revolution which produced much of the settlement of the area. Strategies for local sourcing of materials, local sourcing of work and community management of the landscape and public facilities were devised to help develop spatial cohesion and a sense of accountability for the development’s long term impact. Our scheme for Lightmoor was a bid entry following shortlisting at PPQ stage and from which we emerged in second place.
Leybourne Grange
Leybourne Grange is a country estate of 80 acres close to Maidstone that between the 1930s and the late 1980s became home to a small town through the several phases of development of a County Mental Health Hospital of some 2000 patients.
A hunting estate before the 18th century, its classical villa was extended in the 1850s to become the centre piece of an estate of parkland, woods and lakes. Into this rich rolling landscape the community houses, schools, workshops and communal buildings for the hospital were placed with no thought to their impact on the setting of the surviving historic elements.
We were engaged by the NHS to prepare the site for transfer to English Partnerships and disposal under the Sustainable Communities Programme. The Masterplan we prepared was used to secure planning permission for the site to be re-used as a 700 dwelling mixed use settlement, one of three sites competing for allocation at the time in the Tonbridge and Malling Local Plan. Working with Local Planning Consultants, Broadlands we believed using Leybourne in this way would offer a particularly good quality of life to its future residents. By recovering a generous setting for the mansion and using development revenues to restore its lakes, woods and other heritage elements both the past and future would benefit. All these historic elements thus became generators of the plan, guiding the provision of views and open space. The scheme secured planning permission at appeal and has now become part of the delivery of more sustainable living in the South East of England.
The Greater Railway Triangle, Gloucester
When the railways came to Gloucester the connecting lines from the Midlands, the South and South Wales isolated a 36ha site of virgin land at the centre which has escaped development ever since. Yet the Triangle is close to the city centre and forms the eastern gateway to it and is one of the seven development zones of the Gloucester Regeneration Project under the control of the Gloucester Heritage Urban Regeneration Company.
Nash Partnership was appointed in early 2008 as urban designers in a consortium with GVA Grimley, Alan Baxter Associates, Nicholas Pearson Associates, Gardiner & Theobald and Accon UK to prepare a Masterplan for the area.
The main goal of the plan is to identify all of the wider public and community benefits the development of this and adjoining sites should bring in connecting several historic districts that have developed without such connections. The land has considerable potential for introducing renewable energy infrastructure into the heart of the city which the design team are evaluating.
Regeneration is a step by step process and one of our aims is to identify the phasing strategy which is most likely to secure the best results in values, quality of output and widescale community benefit. The completed Masterplan will be adopted as Special Planning Guidance alongside the structure and local development framework and used to evaluate land owner/ developers proposals as they come forward on its various elements. An important goal of the plan is to explore how the site can be used as the main transportation gateway into the city from the east and will be strongly landscape led.
Future Directions
The world in which urban designers have to do their work is increasingly complex. It requires a broad understanding of the Statutory Planning Process and many aspects of the natural and manmade environment. Good Urban Masterplanning involves a considerable depth and range of professional experience and an ability to work well within design teams involving a wide range of overlapping professional interests. Delivering solutions and bringing leadership to these processes is, in itself, extremely important and the challenges can only become greater in the years ahead as urban society across the world has to grapple with the changes that coping with climate change will bring.
It is increasingly likely that many land use and investment decisions will be affected by the need to optimise and evaluate against sustainability goals, by applying new sequential approaches. We can expect the regeneration spotlight to fall on areas of established settlement in our towns and cities which, although established, will be seen to perform poorly in energy and carbon cost terms compared with the standards of new development and design. How renewable energy power plants, cycle routes, public transport systems, better open space and more equitable housing can be introduced into established areas will all be new challenges.
However, it is not only in the realm of physical design that serious work will have to be done; making our world more sustainable can only be done if communities, whether be institutional, at district or urban level can consider themselves to be more accountable for their impacts, in food supply, treatment of waste, sourcing of energy or their management of the natural world. Creating that accountability involves understanding and making more tangible the various loops of the economy in global and regional terms.
When a community can see where its waste goes, where its energy is created, where its building materials are obtained, and feels responsible for management of its local environment it will become empowered, have a stronger and prouder local identity, be able to achieve more and better face the challenges that climate will bring. Thinking how to create this awareness of the workings of a regional economy is an important element of our current planning work.
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