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The Green Heart
Discipline : Urban Design, Landscape Architecture & Landscaping
Categories : Landscape Architecture / Public Space Landscape Architecture : Gold Certification
The Green Heart promotes serendipitous encounter, re-envisioning the campus heart as a social hub and outdoor classroom – all enabled by the latest tech. Our goal was to re-connect a campus which had lost its sense of place. Taking the radical step of removing the 1950’s library allowed the re-definition of the core, creating a new setting for the faculties. Five hectares of open space was released, raising the status of the public realm to become the new talking point.
External rooms encourage academics to meet, mingle, study and teach; to hatch the next big idea. Smart furniture allows students to plug in and switch on, with innovative paving converting kinetic energy into power. Elegant bridges and ramps overcome challenging levels, ensuring all parts are accessible to all.
Our campus shepherds’ natural resources, filtering and retaining rainwater which discharges naturally into the ground. Ecological richness plays a key role with crevices and niches providing new homes for bats, birds and hedgehogs.
Through our work a collaboration sprang up between designers and academics, studying the ability of green infrastructure to address issues of urban air quality. It’s an inspiring model for the future – a landscape that doubles as a seedbed of the imagination and a model for humane living.
The process of occupation and adoption is just beginning, but the true success will come from the traditions and narratives that the students generate themselves.
Collaboration
Landscape Architecture : Churchman Thornhill Finch
Architect : Associated Architects
Urban planner : MJP Architects
Lighting : Speirs + Major
Engineering : Arup
Engineering : CPW
Engineering : ORBs
Other : Treeworks
General Contractor : Willmott Dixon
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