South-East Faversham

The Duchy of Cornwall, best known for its pioneering, sustainable developments at Poundbury and at Nansledan, owns a significant landholding to the south of the historic town of Faversham, in Kent.

With Kim Wilkie, with whom we work regularly, we have been masterplanning a new settlement on this site which will create a powerful new vision of what truly sustainable development means today – starting from the earth up.  Kim and our studio have developed a masterplan philosophy around soil, water and local patterns of human relationship with the land.  A network of avenues, orchards, allotments, meadows and wooded rides will link the built form together in a beautiful, gently-gridded plan of tree-lined streets. At the heart of the development is a large public urban square that will contain the Cricket Club.

The masterplan allows for a rich mix of houses, commercial buildings, shops, cafes, schools and other buildings and will contain a significant proportion of affordable housing provision. All buildings have been designed with best practice sustainable performance in mind, both in terms of building fabric, energy use, storage and generation, water consumption and treatment of sewage using highly innovative systems.

We have spent time and great care studying local patterns of development in Faversham and Swale, in order to inform our approach not only to local patterns of landscape development but also to buildings and materials.  As a practice we passionately believe that the best solutions to contemporary problems can often be found using the wisdom of tradition and extremely local building forms, adapted for the best of life today and in the future.

Download the Faversham Characterisation Study.

Details

Client
The Duchy of Cornwall

Location
Faversham, Kent

Date
2019 - present

©ben pentreath ltd 2018

South-East Faversham