Shortlisted landscape designs announced for UK's first Garden City of the 21st Century
An international design competition to determine who will design the first Garden City of the 21st century has been whittled down to five, with Ebbsfleet to become the largest of 10 "Healthy New Towns" being developed in the UK.
The competition was launched by the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation and the NHS in March to find the best creative and inspiring ideas, which will be used to shape the landscape of the new Garden City.
The competition features two stages and is managed by The Landscape Institute. The first stage of the competition invited entries from landscape professionals, or teams including landscape professionals, with multidisciplinary teams incorporating artists and engineers particularly encouraged.
Competition organisers wanted to “challenge landscape professionals and students to collaborate with other built environment professions, artists, and place-makers and propose design ideas for what can be achieved in a truly modern healthy city”.
"The range of ideas and approaches we have received and the shortlist is outstanding," said Kevin McKeogh, director of the Ebbsfleet Healthy New Town Programme and member of the judging panel. "I look forward to the competition moving on to its next phase”.
Below are the five entrants the panel of ten judges chose to go through to the second stage of the competition, as well as a description of their plans in their own words:
The Chalk Walk
Additive Urbanism, a landscape design studio led by Matthew Halsall CMLI. In collaboration with Ryan Szyani, architectural installation designer.
The Chalk Walk seeks to build on the success of recent guided walking tours in Ebbsfleet, and the appetite for exploration and learning about nature. A circular walking route would be created, orientated around the site’s monolithic man-made chalk landscape features; punctuated by a series of vertical gardens built into the chalk.
Expert advice has been sought from local ecological groups, Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife, to create a series of nature interventions that combine to form an educational wildlife trail - The Chalk Walk. This would be implemented prior to the main development, employing a series of devices connecting new and existing communities to one another, in order to greatly improve access to nature and provide a healthy alternative to travelling by car.
Ebbsfleet Sublime LDA Design in collaboration with Architecture 00 and Vivid Economics.
Places are more important to well-being than objects. This was the outcome of a recent study by Surrey University. Ebbsfleet should celebrate the deep human desire for authenticity and connection with place and people that underpins wellbeing. Our proposal fundamentally reorients planning and delivery processes away from land, infrastructure, and buildings to place, landscape and wellbeing.
The Ebbsfleet Sublime is imagined as a beautiful, carefully curated experiential landscape which accommodates productive land, play, workspace, recreation. It draws out the sublimity of nature from the Ebbsfleet landscape and adopts the painterly techniques of Turner, Gainsborough, and Lambert to create a heightened sense of wellbeing. At the heart of the Ebbsfleet Sublime is a calculated and determined effort to overcome the pre-eminent challenge of delivering a new Garden City at scale and pace by leading with the landscape.
Everyday Adventure
Huskisson Brown Associates working with Claire Powell Chartered Physiotherapist.
Everyday Adventure focuses on creating a framework of accessible, active and sociable green routes that connect communities, destinations and population groups and promote walking and physical activity as the preferred choice for everyday journeys and experiences. Fundamentally, the routes will be designed to inspire active living and physical activity for all ages and abilities and create uplifting places that engender a feeling of safety, belonging and happiness.
The area’s local context and unique cultural and industrial heritage will be celebrated through the creation of links to the wider landscape and urban fabric as well as contextual detailed design measures. Everyday Adventure will bring community groups together and provide cross-generational health and well-being outcomes associated with increased physical activity, social interaction and being outdoors.
H.A.L.O Bradley Murphy Design in collaboration with JTP, Peter Brett Associates and Sebastien Boyesen
HALO delivers healthy infrastructure to the doorstep. It provides accessible, attractive and inspirational places that motivate citizens to engage in physical activity as a natural part of their daily lives. It comprises four key interventions that overlay Ebbsfleet like a web. They connect people to place and to each other, addressing the fragmentation of landscape and habitats, limitations of access and restricted sources of healthy food.
The model is built around five healthy lifestyle principles: equality of access; connection with nature; engagement with food production; access to people and; the importance of physical activity. These interventions respond to local context through a range of typological treatments, that are reflective of local landscape character, building a richness of experience that is unique to Ebbsfleet.
Swanscombe Gorge Park By Chris Blandford Associates in association with Buro Happold and Proctor & Matthews
Welcome to Swanscombe Gorge Park, a dramatic and hidden wooded ravine at the heart of Ebbsfleet Garden City. The aims are to: reconnect the landscape and communities; regenerate and repair the existing natural landscape; rejuvenate the site with cultural and recreational activities and to re-use local materials.
Their inspirations include: the geological story of chalk; in particular, the spectacular fossils of fish skeletons associated with its marine formation. The legacy of the area’s chalk quarrying heritage: the unique landform of Craylands Gorge cut into the chalk bedrock to provide a tramway between Eastern Quarry and the cement works on Swanscombe Peninsula; the tramway’s tunnels cut into the white chalk spines symbolising portals or gateways to another place, realm or time; and the local folklore associated with ‘deneholes’ (Medieval chalk extraction pits with narrow shafts opening out into chambers often used to conceal people and illicit goods).
The five shortlisted companies will now have received a second stage brief for the latter half of the competition which tasks them with composing designs for one of the lakes within the city. The winner will be announced at the LI (Landscape Institute) Annual Conference on 6 September 2018.
Ebbsfleet NHS The Landscape Institute
International competition launched for UK’s first Garden City of the 21st Century
David Stalker: Garden city must adopt physical activity strategy
GoCo Health Innovation City in Sweden plans to lead the world in delivering wellness and new science
Aman sister brand Janu debuts in Tokyo with four-floor urban wellness retreat
€38m geothermal spa and leisure centre to revitalise Croatian city of Bjelovar
Two Santani eco-friendly wellness resorts coming to Oman, partnered with Omran Group
Kerzner shows confidence in its Siro wellness hotel concept, revealing plans to open 100
Ritz-Carlton, Portland unveils skyline spa inspired by unfolding petals of a rose
Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners are just one of the names behind The Emory hotel London and Surrenne private members club
Peninsula Hot Springs unveils AUS$11.7m sister site in Australian outback
IWBI creates WELL for residential programme to inspire healthy living environments
Conrad Orlando unveils water-inspired spa oasis amid billion-dollar Evermore Resort complex
Studio A+ realises striking urban hot springs retreat in China's Shanxi Province
Populous reveals plans for major e-sports arena in Saudi Arabia
Wake The Tiger launches new 1,000sq m expansion
Othership CEO envisions its urban bathhouses in every city in North America
Merlin teams up with Hasbro and Lego to create Peppa Pig experiences
SHA Wellness unveils highly-anticipated Mexico outpost
One&Only One Za’abeel opens in Dubai featuring striking design by Nikken Sekkei
Luxury spa hotel, Calcot Manor, creates new Grain Store health club
'World's largest' indoor ski centre by 10 Design slated to open in 2025
Murrayshall Country Estate awarded planning permission for multi-million-pound spa and leisure centre
Aman's Janu hotel by Pelli Clarke & Partners will have 4,000sq m of wellness space
Therme Group confirms Incheon Golden Harbor location for South Korean wellbeing resort
Universal Studios eyes the UK for first European resort
King of Bhutan unveils masterplan for Mindfulness City, designed by BIG, Arup and Cistri
Rural locations are the next frontier for expansion for the health club sector
Tonik Associates designs new suburban model for high-end Third Space health and wellness club
Aman sister brand Janu launching in Tokyo in 2024 with design by Denniston's Jean-Michel Gathy
The Peninsula London unveils Peter Marino-designed spa inspired by London’s famous parks
First glimpses revealed of Mandarin Oriental, Mayfair's subterranean spa retreat
"Architecture is alive" says Ma Yansong, as Shenzhen art museum opens exhibition showcasing work of MAD Architects
Bionic leaves, breathable metals and selfgrowing bricks... Biomimicry in architecture has come a long way. Christopher DeWolf takes a look at the latest advances
Creating the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York involved meticulous planning. Its director Alice Greenwald tells us more