I assisted Rummey Design as urban design consultant on this next generation refresh plan for this successful science park on the edge of the city of Southampton. The campus sits around the old Chilworth Manor hotel and its woodlands, and borders the M27 motorway to the south. The masterplan addresses the future of the science park, its offer as an innovation cluster and as a fabulous and highly sustainable place to work. Close to the main University, the University Hospital, the M3 corridor and freeport, the Science Park is a key player at the heart of the city-region’s innovation culture.
By tackling surface parking, retaining the mature landscape and integrating new laboratory and prototyping spaces with high quality public realm, the masterplan delivers the potential for the park to strengthen its knowledge-based cluster role in the region. The plan includes reconfiguring the landscape to make a new car-free Science Village centre, a mobility hub for enhanced shared transport, sports facilities for recreation and communal break out spaces for more work and social options. The masterplan proposes the landscape be enriched with new ponds, planting, meadows and orchards and improvements for cycle and walking made to the network of byways around the park.
