Winter Gardens Bournemouth, UK
The scheme proposes a £100 million mixed-use scheme for the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth, the largest of its kind in the seaside town’s history.
The proposals will bring to the town centre new restaurants, premium retail accommodation, new public spaces, a children’s outdoor play facility and over 4,000 square meters of dedicated leisure space. Plans include 352 high-quality homes to meet the demands for high quality town centre living, consisting of one, two and three-bed apartments as well as luxury penthouses; with stunning views towards Poole Harbour and the Jurassic Coast.
The existing 225 public parking spaces will be re-provided in a new below-ground car park, discretely located under a landscaped podium, in addition to the 369 dedicated spaces for residents and visitors. The residences are accommodated within four slender multi-storey buildings of varying heights, set amidst considerable landscaped grounds that provide leisure, recreation and residential amenity.
The plan is to rejuvenate this important, 1.98 hectare, town centre site that has been underutilised since the demolition of the existing concert hall in 2006.
Central to the design of the proposals was the careful sculpting and modelling of the four buildings in order to balance significant areas of high-quality public realm, green space and private amenity space, with development volume required to deliver a commercially-viable scheme, befitting Bournemouth Council’s ‘Town Centre Vision’.
The form and aesthetics of the Winter Gardens proposal responds to Bournemouth’s seaside Art Deco heritage.
The Winter Gardens proposal responds to Bournemouth’s seaside Art Deco heritage, with long, curvilinear balconies with radiused ends, sculptural white rendered facades, elements of which snake into and out of the façade planes to create private balconies and terraces. The tripartite stone facades, of an urban high street aesthetic, draw on references to the historic perimeter block facades to Bournemouth’s town square. High points of the buildings are elevated in glass and project out and above the dynamic rendered ‘sails’, giving a lightweight feel to the slender pinnacles.
Substantial planting around the terraced edges reinforce the concept of vertical landscaped buildings emerging up from the gardens below. This planting serves to soften the dynamic form of the buildings, but also responds to a reoccurring characteristic in and around Bournemouth of buildings set against and within a rising verdant landscape.
The proposal includes enhanced public gardens, landscaped street frontage and new Piazza. For residents, there will be landscaped private gardens on the podium above parking structure.
Regeneration of the town with high quality public realm, energised with appropriate uses.
The proposals are set within the neighbouring developments of the Hilton Hotel and BH2, and fronting Exeter Road, will be a new and generously-sized public piazza. This new public space, with terraced lawns, fountains and seating, will provide residents and visitors with a high quality attractive, multi-functional place, in which to enjoy anything from lunch to larger attractions – such as the Bournemouth Air Show and Bournemouth Wheels festivals. The new leisure uses targeting family and wet weather entertainment, front this new area of public realm.
The Exeter Road frontage provides for generous outdoor landscaped dining spaces fronting the proposed restaurants together with new cycle paths and tree-lined pedestrian route. The new piazza and wide site frontage will together deliver a major part of the Town Council’s vision for the creation of a ‘Grand Garden Walk’, a circular route that loops around Bournemouth’s historic lower gardens and connects the sea front Pier Approach to the town’s central square.
Overall, the Winter Gardens scheme provides an important opportunity to rejuvenate Bournemouth’s town centre. Transforming the underutilised site into the proposed spaces is of massive benefit to the town and the local community.
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