Bryngwyn Fields, Garden Village, Swansea
In early 2020 Persimmon Homes brought us on board to help rework their 2019 submission to Swansea Council. Little did we know then that the project would be carried out during a global pandemic or that its success would become a blueprint for a new way of virtual working and infrastructure-led placemaking by a mass house builder.
Our Challenge
EDP were added to the Persimmon Homes design team at the request of
Swansea Council for the housebuilder to appoint a masterplanner and
‘placemaking adviser’.
The initial scheme was contrary to the policy framework due to lack of green infrastructure, lack of quality and character, unresolved low speed street network and dominance of car parking.
Our Solution
The LDP allocation for this site required a sustainable extension to link Garden Village, Swansea to Gorseinon High Street.
Our masterplan fulfilled this requirement by creating cohesive communities within three distinct character areas to support a likely population of 1,700 people. It did this by introducing a network of pedestrian routes and green spaces – including a large new central parkland area with an extensive range of play provision – to encourage walking and well-being for residents, old and new.
Our Extraordinary
Coronavirus forced us to change our approach to ensure we could actively engage and collaborate between all parties. We established a process with which to virtually collaborate to meet the placemaking objectives through a series of group video workshops. This ‘new’ way of meeting and workshopping ideas felt much more democratic, with everyone arranged on screen as individuals as opposed to ‘us and them’ with metaphorical battle lines drawn across a table from one another.
Testament to the success of our new way of working can be summed up by the words in Swansea City Council’s Placemaking & Strategic Planning Advisor Committee Report:
“The negotiation process between applicant and LPA, which have been undertaken in large part during pandemic lockdown, has been a collaborative and creative exercise that significantly improved the scheme as originally proposed in the initial Reserved Matters application. In fact, the process followed is considered a potential exemplar of the placemaking approach for residential developments. Having regard to the submitted plans and information, there is a significant opportunity for Bryngwyn Fields, Garden Village to become a connected place, a green place, a distinctive place and potentially an exemplar of green infrastructure-led placemaking by a mass house builder.”
"This was a superb project to be involved with. Having delivered the ‘Outline’ planning consent in the years prior, it felt right that we took forward those creative concepts to the detailed ‘Reserved Matters’ stage. A vast project, Bryngwyn Fields included provisions for 720 new homes, with green infrastructure right at its heart. Clare and I rose to the challenge of delivering the landscape design inputs for the entire public realm.
Through hours spent on the drawing board, on Teams calls (in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic), and through client and project team collaboration, detailed solutions followed and included a huge range of landscape typologies/ideas. Orchard and biodiversity parks, pocket greens, ecological interpretation boards, as well as natural and traditional play features will soon offer Garden Villages’ future residents a great range of exciting and, most importantly, ‘green’ features within this new community. Reptile hibernacula and bat/bird boxes also feature strongly in the proposals.
At EDP, we are encouraged from an early stage in our careers to grow and learn in many ways, whether it be through client liaison, internal multi-disciplinary design workshops or through project management. Bryngwyn Fields was a real testament to that ethos, and through effective use of the above, we created a Reserved Matters scheme that was unanimously approved at Planning Committee on 2nd July 2021.
Clare and I learnt a lot throughout the project timeline. What I found most interesting was how solutions for ecology, arboriculture and landscape were tied together, as they should be, to produce a cohesive and policy compliant proposal. This was a real success for all involved."
"This project provided an opportunity for me to work with colleagues across the different EDP offices at the early stages of my career and develop my skills and knowledge working within Welsh planning. As a large-scale development, the design outputs were substantial and required close teamwork between Joe and me to produce. Having opportunities to work with colleagues across the whole EDP team is something that I value greatly in my career, as it opens the door to a variety of interesting projects such as this one."
Our core project team
Senior Landscape Architect
Director
Director
Senior Landscape Architect
Director
Associate