Regent’s Place is the landscape transformation of a mixed-use campus for British Land that has created a lush green welcoming public amenity to be enjoyed by occupiers and visitors alike.

Regent’s Place is a 13-acre mixed use campus, with a focus on office space, owned and operated by British Land. The overall scheme focuses on designing places for people, improving the quality of experience through inclusive design principles, and major greening of the public realm for health, wellbeing and biodiverse sustainability.

The project brief asked for a concept master plan, then full design, to be delivered in two phases, to transform the existing public realm from an uninviting corporate aesthetic dominated by hard landscape, into a welcoming green inclusive public amenity to be enjoyed by occupiers and visitors alike.

The campus, located on the Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden, is at the meeting point of contrasting neighbourhoods: Fitzrovia, Somers Town, and the Regent’s Park Estate, a predominantly residential area with a range of community uses, including schools and community centres.

It is part of the Knowledge Quarter, a consortium of over 100 academic, cultural, research, scientific and media organizations with the shared aim of advancing and disseminating knowledge. The Knowledge Quarter works with its members ‘to identify and support work that improves our local environment, creating a great place for people to live, work and visit’.

A retrofit scheme, the design considered and addressed complex aspects, including load balancing the landscape above existing basements, working with constrained build-up depths, and incorporating extensive areas of basement ventilation. The scale of the buildings also created a challenging shady and windy microclimate.

The team worked closely with British Land and consulted the local communities to develop a shared vision, a design which incorporated significant areas of new planting, paving and street furniture with the aim of creating a habitable, attractive public realm where people from all walks of life can sit, play, and engage as part of a site wide promotion of healthy and active lifestyles.

John Czernobay, Project Director, British Land said:

"Regents Place is a busy Campus home to many office workers, residents and visitors and part of the dynamic Knowledge Quarter. The Project Team have seamlessly brought together beautiful design, artisan craftsmanship and clever engineering to this very busy part of London to create a very unique place of joy and delight. You can only be successful with this type of project if you lead with conviction, truly commit and collaborate with neighbour stakeholders, designers, manufacturers and specialists and that’s exactly what the Project Team did. There were numerous constraints and challenges on the scheme least of all constructing the park on a podium deck right above many underground services and supply corridors. The Project Team demonstrated great skill and understanding in the day-to-day workings of the Campus and worked very closely with onsite Management Teams to minimise any disruption to occupiers and visitors alike. Trust and Collaboration of the Project Team is essential and by utilizing all of their skills in design, construction management and logistics expertise prior to construction gave the project an unparalleled opportunity to prioritize, plan and co-ordinate key critical tasks to deliver success. This enabled a timely start on site with detailed and co-ordinated design, manufacturing and install programmes together with early purchase items being facilitated so as to produce a high level of site activity throughout the project. With a Commit and Collaborate ethos throughout the Project Team numerous unforeseen technical challenges were taken on as the works proceeded without any loss to productivity and inconvenience to all stakeholders and to the Client. The project was well thought out, well delivered in a site safe environment to a high degree of local stakeholder satisfaction. Take time out to step off the busy Euston Road and enjoy some greener spaces and thriving places. If the city is a jungle, then here is your oasis. Great Job. "