Working ecological functions into the urban landscape by developing the best strategies for developments to balance spatial quality and environmental resilience.
This upmarket lifestyle and retirement development introduces 49 Apartment Style Units and 12 Mews-Style Homes to the grounds of a heritage manor. Resident’s facilities include a wellness centre, gymnasium, restaurant, coffee shop, library, cinema and outdoor entertainment areas.
Steep slope conditions required a long term strategy of erosion and stormwater control.
Together with the Civil engineer, we designed a successful storm water system with rain gardens and bioswales to create a natural water feature system that creates intrigue in the landscape and also contains the water for the site’s irrigation system.
The barren site created an opportunity to reconnect this site to natural vegetation that compliments the vernacular architecture of the manor. The design of Wytham Estate adaptively reworks this compact site through the carefully articulated connections between the residential units, the private gardens, terraces and the shared social spaces.
Contextually-responsive interventions integrate natural systems into the built-up landscape. These natural systems provide a variety of benefits: lush greenery mitigates the build-up of heat from hard urban surfaces; naturalistic water features help to cool the environment whilst generous areas of planting slow and infiltrate surface water run-off.
