Hines

Fort Halstead

Acquiring a brownfield site in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Green Belt – formerly used by the Ministry of Defence to test ballistics, Hines, as development managers, commissioned ZZA to help facilitate exemplary sustainable regeneration. Zoned for employment use, the site’s location on a hill behind a screen of trees obscured its scale and infrastructural obsolescence. ZZA worked with the project team to propose a walkable, multi-generation, mixed income place for live, work and play. Engaging proactively and responsively with local parties – through interviews, workshops, meetings, and exhibitions, we marshalled input from children, teens, ‘young old’, and ‘old old’, enlisting neighbours, businesses and service providers in a shared vision. A major strand involved design charettes and guidance on translating the strategic brief to the evolving master plan.