The landscape design has created a lush green setting for the new built form, interwoven with features that invite the community in. These include a small urban orchard; food growing pockets; plus a communal square allowing space for people to stretch, play, and hold events alongside the Community Centre.
Soft landscape areas are connected where possible throughout the site to provide green corridors for wildlife, reduce surface water run-off and help cool the landscape during hot summers. Planted with trees, biodiverse shrubs, perennials and bulbs, playful boulders pepper the greenspace to encourage play on the way, and chunky planters provide additional communal growing space.
The scheme has been a great success: a new green corridor providing links for local pollinators, insects, and amphibians to set out beyond Downhills Park. The park’s new pedestrian access has also been a triumph, and the streetscape continues to serve as a successful walkable link for the new scheme and their West Green neighbours.
West Green Place is a verdant new street set beside Downhills Park in the London Borough of Haringey. Another scheme for our client Pocket Living, champions of affordable London starter homes: they asked us to create an inspiring landscape that would bring together new residents and the existing community.
The Dyvik Kahlen-designed Community Centre and Nursery provides a gateway to the site, and a key concept was for our exemplary, pedestrian-focused streetscape to connect those walking and cycling here to Downhills Park. The landscape also aims to create a meaningful transition between its two neighbouring character areas: the tree-filled greenery of the park to the west, and pleasing regularity of Victorian terraces to the east.
The new homes designed by HTA Design provide 126 new residences, of which 78% would be affordable housing featuring communal terraces and facilities, alongside 16 contemporary townhouses with private rear gardens.
