Mill Road, Cambridge

Cambridge Investment Partnership
Cambridge

TEP provided landscape design expertise, working alongside Allies & Morrison and Mott McDonald for the redevelopment of the City Council’s Mill Road Depot.

The landscape proposals create a new park and public open space equating to 28% of the overall area of the site. This is attained by designing a podium landscape set over basement car parking.

The design provides a new neighbourhood park with equipped play areas for younger and older children, a large lawn for informal recreation and seating areas for socialising and relaxation. There are leafy and safe pedestrian priority streets, suitable for doorstep play with natural surveillance and the circulation and access has been well considered to ensure good connectivity with the surrounding network of footpaths, cycleways and streets. Our design includes open swales which attenuate rainwater, with ornamental grass planting and playful features creating a joyful and seasonal landscape setting for the new homes.

The landscape proposals integrate drainage features in innovative ways to create interest and variety in the open spaces. This includes a series of rainwater garden and bio retention areas within Eagle Park which collect and filter water from surrounding paved surfaces and roofs. A rill runs along the bottom of the bio retention areas providing a conduit for rainwater to pass along. In addition part of the open space has been designed to be floodable during heavy rainfall. A sunken lawn area in Eagle Park will typically be use-able as informal open space but will be able to supply additional storage capacity following high rainfall events.