Welborne

Welborne is a major new settlement being planned in Hampshire using the design philosophy of the Garden City Movement. We have been working alongside the visionary landowner, Buckland, for some five years now, taking forward the schematic masterplan into reality.  Construction work commences in 2023 which will see ground breaking on this long-term, legacy project.

We have worked through the process – developing the street network and movement patterns, working with the landscape architect Kim Wilkie to create a powerful landscape-led framework to the town, and designing and writing the architectural and materials code for the entire settlement. The plans will create a place of significant architectural variety, but still with a strongly developed overall sense of place and harmony.  There is a huge concentration on proper delivery of commercial and mixed use development, and affordable housing.

In 2022, we moved towards the first phase detailed application, working alongside CG Fry, Pye Homes (and Adam Urbanism) and Thakeham Homes to bring forward a co-ordinated application for some 750 homes.

Tornagrain

Tornagrain is a new town being developed by Moray Estates to the east of Inverness. Part of a broad strategy to meet new housing demand in the Highlands, Tornagrain has been planned for almost a decade. The major master plan was developed by Andres Duany and DPZ, and this was granted outline approval in the summer of 2012.

Ben Pentreath & Associates won a limited competition to take forward the scheme to detailed planning in 2011. Since then we have been working closely with the landowner and with DPZ to bring forward a more detailed master plan for these first 200 dwellings, which include retail and commercial space, recreation grounds and tennis courts, and a school; we are now working on the next phases to the north, east and west, including early designs for the main high street of Tornagrain, planned around a large new town square.

The design of the houses draws closely on the appearance of local towns and Darnaway Estate buildings, combined with more contemporary elements in rear courtyards and mews. The town as a whole allows for a huge variety of architectural scale and language, with the most recent phases becoming more formal in character.

The town founding ceremony was held in the summer of 2015 – the start of a lifetime’s project, bringing an extraordinary new town for the Highlands to fruition.

Sulis Down

We have been working for a number of years on designs for this extremely sensitive site on the edge of the City of Bath; within the designated World Heritage Site and the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and surrounded by Green Belt land.

The first phase, of approximately 200 dwellings, has been designed to create a beautiful new additional to the architecture of Bath, but one which draws on a local Arts & Crafts vernacular rather than the formal, classical Georgian language found in the City centre.

The specific site for these houses is in a piece of land well-contained by mature, established tree belts. The parcel of land suggested a simple grid to the masterplan and from this we drew on the sense that this should feel liked a planned and structured piece of urbanism, rather than anything more organic.

We spent some time, with the client, looking at the design and masterplanning of Hampstead Garden Suburb in developing our proposals. The architectural language draws closely from the Cotswold tradition with extensive use of stone walling and stone slate roofs.

The designs have been through an extensive pre-application consultation with local people and officers and were submitted for planning in 2017. Attention will now begin to turn to the next phase of the development which is intended to have a more village-like, organic character.