Designed in collaboration with John Rowland Urban Design, this masterplan for the 40-hectare Millennium Community at Ketley, just outside Birmingham, consists of 850 dwellings of affordable housing, live/work units, a new primary school, offices, retail and leisure services. The plan achieves an urbanity through its geometry of squares and gentle curves reminiscent of Georgian streets and is a delicate and careful response to the rare and protected ecology on the site.
As well as broader goals of physical and social regeneration, the masterplan’s specific objectives included environmental targets, ecology and land remediation, design codes and standardisation; offsite constructed housing system and modular shared surfaces.
Three distinct character areas were developed, relating to the local topography: a civic area at the entrance containing a new public park and main public square to the school; an area of environmentally sensitive development with the lowest densities bounding the habitat of protected species; and development around a lake at the foot of the steepest slopes of the site requiring novel residential arrangements. The sinuous central spine road is a ‘formal’ tree lined avenue winding its way through the heart of the site linking these areas, fronted by the tallest and most substantial buildings. Streets branching off give access to lower dwellings in ‘home zones’ with equal priority to pedestrians and vehicles.