Working in partnership with Balfour Beatty and Stride Treglown, ONE Environments was commissioned to prepare concept designs for a DBFO tender for the residential expansion of the Heslington East Campus. The project offered an exciting opportunity to create concept designs for a new residential village for the University of York, bringing together the new Heslington East and historical West campuses.

With student experience and wellbeing as a focus, we created a landscape vision for high-quality external living spaces around two distinct building clusters providing accommodation for 1,400 students. Rooted in the lakeside setting and inspired by York’s unique heritage our design included a variety of sheltered residential gardens accessed through a shared social hub set within a vibrant parkland quarter.

A key priority throughout the design process was creating a ‘home away from home’ environment for students, many from outside of the UK, encouraging incidental and planned socialising that revolved around the social hubs, defined courtyards and accessible lakeside. Generous green vistas around the building hubs formed part of the overall connectivity of habitats, water features, parkland and lakes around the East Campus engaging students with the natural environment and encouraging active transport through walking and cycling routes.

CLIENT:  Balfour Beatty Investments
LOCATION: York
PARTNERS:  Stride Treglown, Balfour Beatty Construction, WSP
SERVICES:  Landscape Architecture S1-S3
PROGRAMME: 2018