Detailed site analysis informed the masterplan to rejuvenate the listed 20th century Borough civic campus: expanding cultural and community services within the Town Hall; replacing the later Magistrates Court; and incorporating new residential development in keeping with the existing campus arrangement.

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Site analysis demonstrated how wartime economies affected the construction of architect Philip Dalton Hepworth’s competition winning simplified Nordic Classicism design.  The intended scheme was never fully realised, leaving ‘corner sites’, open spaces in the north-west and north-east of the campus. 

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The proposed masterplan revisited the original architectural aspirations held back by post-War austerity,  recognising the opportunity to explore a narrative design dialogue that explicitly references evolving relationships between civic institutions and the people they serve.

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Working closely with the project architects, highways consultants and the client, an agreement to locate new residential blocks on negative space used as on-site employee car parking was secured. Specific landscape design parameters referenced key surviving components of the original scheme, which were extended to integrate the expanded campus and reanimate the public experience of the historic Town Hall and Assembly Hall.