Master planning
Master plans can cover a range of scales, from the site-specific to the urban. Indeed, master-planning at urban or regional scales often falls under one of two categories - "urban design" or "green infrastructure". Both of these are activities that landscape architects have been involved in, long before they were titled as such.
Site assessment is followed by sketch designs, which, as the name suggests, are fluid, changeable concepts, produced to explore designs and to aid discussion. These are then refined into Master plans to provide the overview statement for the design.
If your development project includes buildings, a Master plan will optimise placement, aspect and circulation of vehicles and pedestrians. This process makes the most of your site development and benefits from an overview of the site issues - a particular skill of landscape architects.
Master plans provide an early statement of design intention. They help to communicate the benefits of the proposal to planners, senior managers or the public.
The Master plan presents the overview, the vision for the whole site design, which then guides the detail design of specific areas and elements like earthworks, hardworks and softworks.
Project examples:
Open Space Masterplans
Hull Super Stadium
A predecessor of the final Stadium design, this was produced as part of the Environmental Assessment of the Stadium project - perhaps a more exciting design than the final result?
Bude Park Public Open Space
This park masterplan was created to provide a framework for local developers to invest this Public Open Space.
Scunthorpe Central Park - Concept Plan
A design for Scunthorpe's Central Park, with a landscape structure which responds to and builds on the existing layout. The design concept is inspired by Scunthorpe's unique geology, which brought it into being being as an iron-smelting town.
Bransholme Green Enterprise
This plan was produced to explain the inter-relationship of Green Enterprise projects proposed as a regeneration strategy for the area.
Woodland Cemetery Zoning
This Zoning masterplan explained the concept design and phasing for a proposed Woodland Cemetery (see also
Softworks > Planting Gallery).
Mersey Life Green Infrastructure
Mersey Life Green Infrastructure
Mersey Life Green Infrastructure is a Maslen-JBA project for the Environment Agency, using multiple layers of GIS data to analyse and identify Green Infrastructure opportunities along the Mersey, just east of Warrington (see also
Softworks and
Sustainability ).
Urban Renaissance
Renaissance Goole
As local Chamber of Commerce members, we wrote a report for Renaissance Goole, highlighting this interesting town's many architectural and industrial assets, which should be developed within a regeneration strategy.
Crosby Pathfinder
In this area just west of Scunthorpe Town Centre, problems experienced by local residents include rat-runs and excessive parking on their streets, to avoid charges in adjacent car-parks. This plan set out the main issues, which were developed in photomontages (see
Hardworks > Crosby Street Redesign).
Holderness House
Holderness House is a retirement home run by the Ferens Trust in East Hull. We were called in to provide guidance on the long-term development of the grounds.
Restoration Masterplans
Lounge Disposal Point - Restoration Masterplan
This Landscape Masterplan, for a former coal disposal point (where locally-quarried coal was loaded onto freight trains), was produced as part of the Landscape Evidence at a Planning Inquiry. It set out Leicestershire County Council's preferred position for restoration by the landowners, taking into account the site's landscape and biodiversity qualities, and in the context of its National Forest setting.
North Cave Wetlands Restoration
As part of the Planning process for this site, we produced a Masterplan to show the mosaic of wetland habitat types which would be created by gravel extraction with sensitive restoration, guided by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (see also
Photomontage > North Cave Wetlands / Aerial.
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