Client: SOG Ltd.
Location: Runcorn, Cheshire
Award: Finalist
Type: Strategic Plan – 60 Acres
Harper Perry were shortlisted out of over 60 practices to present strategic plans for The Heath Business and Technical Park in Runcorn, Cheshire. We were asked to present conceptual ideas to transform this 60-acre site of the former ICI site into a sustainable, multi-use and carbon-free environment.
A neighbourhood for the future will need to be resilient to many growing challenges; environmental and climatic change, shifting economic trends and increasingly fluid social dynamics. It will be complex, reflecting the interconnections between issues of environment, economy and the patterns of daily life that will shape it. It should be flexible and adaptable, recognizing that new technologies will shape not only how we work, but how we live, travel and interact with one another. The places we design should anticipate this future, with simple, loose-fit forms and a quiet, enduring architecture.
We have set out 7 priorities for a new neighbourhood, and the diagram demonstrates how they are interwoven across various different elements such as; landscape, mobility, housing, energy and social life.
The proposals focused on the setting ambitious quality of life throughout a reimagined Heath Park that combines the building of new houses whilst extending and retrofitting existing office spaces. Central to proposals was a strategic approach to mobility focused on health and wellbeing by removing all traffic from the site. Mobility hubs are proposed at the peripheries to store private and shared vehicles, drop of deliveries and parcels and allow residents, workers and guests transfer to foot or sustainable methods of mobility- bikes or scooters.
Themes such as mobility where expanded across a range of strategies for the site to demonstrate how key strategic moves support activities essential to supporting liveable neighbourhoods – play, health and wellbeing, social and community benefits and energy strategies to deliver a new neighbourhood not just fit for the present, but for future adaptability and flexibility.
