Bath-based landscape architecture firm Grant Associates, which last week unveiled its design for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, has been appointed to a major regeneration scheme also in West London.
The long-anticipated waterfront Brentford Project aims to revitalise the suburb’s centre and establish a new retail, leisure and culinary scene, building on its rich industrial heritage.
Grant Associates will take forward the detailed design and oversee the delivery of the scheme’s landscape and public realm.
The 4.8-hectare waterside site will include 876 new homes, 14,000 sq m of retail, 4,000 sq m of commercial and 8,000 sq m of leisure/cultural space.
Grant Associates’ role will be to take forward the masterplan and public realm strategy to reinforce a sense of place and offer an inclusive and welcoming environment for local residents and visitors.
The designs by architects AHMM, Glenn Howells and Maccreanor Lavington have been inspired by the area’s industrial and waterside heritage with a focus on creating homes that are surrounded by greenery, new public spaces and vibrant public realm.
The landscape and waterfront will provide an ecological and artistic focus and an active and vibrant place to live, walk through and use and will reconnect Brentford High Street to the River Brent, Grand Union Canal and the Thames Path.
Grant Associates director Keith French, pictured, said: “From the beginning, the vision for the Brentford Project has been to reinforce the connection from the high street to the water’s edge, and within it create a new riverside hub and community.
“The landscape and public realm are essential ingredients of this vision and to help establish a beautiful and active place to live, socialise and play.
“The waterfront will be brought back to life with people and nature, and together with the yards will reinforce a sense of place and offer an inclusive destination for local residents and Londoners.”
Grant Associates is best known for producing major eye-catching architectural schemes across the globe for the past 21 years. Its Chelsea Flower Show garden – its first for the show – taps into Chinese design and philosophy and takes inspiration from the way China’s third-largest city Guangzhou.
Grant Associates, which also has an office in Singapore, has recently worked on the Friendship Park project in China’s innovative Tianjin Eco-City and a former industrial wasteland on Sydney’s waterfront.
In its home city of Bath it has also supported the Forest of Imagination community arts event and promoted the delicate ecology of Wessex Water’s operations centre on the city’s outskirts.
