Green Heart, Nottingham for Nottingham City Council with Townshend Landscape Architects and Ares Landscape Architects

The Broadmarsh Big Conversation, held in autumn 2020, was the city council’s largest consultation, gathering over 3,000 responses and 11,000 comments from local residents, businesses and groups. It focused on the future of the Broadmarsh area, with plans to return the historically accurate name, enhance the site’s topography and create undulating planting areas, pathway and seating. The design aims to restore the marsh as an urban pond – visible and accessible.

*Public Space is supported by Vestre*

Who is on the project team? (designer, consultants, etc)

Architects - Townshend 

Technical Design - Ares 

Civil Engineering -  Pick Everard 

Studio -  Michael Grubb Studio

Ecology -  EMEC Ecology

Contractor -  Willmott Dixon

Strategic Advisors -  Heatherwick Studio

Strategic Advisors -  Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust 

Describe the context of this project, its neighbourhood and people.

The Green Heart is located on site of the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre and a busy 3-lane inner ring road. It is a key route between the train station and the city centre that took pedestrians via an internal route through the shopping centre. Following the collapse of Intu Properties in 2020, the shopping centre was left derelict and partly demolished following renovation work. Nottingham City Council, owners of the land and leaseholders for the centre were left with the site. The City Council decided to consult the public over the future of the site. The Broadmarsh Big Conversation was the largest response ever to a City Council consultation. Held over the autumn of 2020 through a website, app and an in-person pop-up shop on Lister Gate, it attracted over 3,000 individual responses and 11,000 comments from local residents, businesses, charities, campaign groups, schools and colleges.

Tell us what you did and how it was designed and delivered. Please explain the governance of the project.

As well as the importance of greenery and nature, the focus on history and heritage was also clear. People reported wanting to see more being made of the caves as a major attraction and an untapped unique selling point for the city. Reinstatement of the historic street patterns was also a key ask and potential restoration of Drury Walk was mentioned. There were also calls to return to the historically accurate name for the area, which is “Broad Marsh”. Following The Broadmarsh Big Conversation, Nottingham City Council formed the Greater Broad Marsh Advisory Group and appointed Heatherwick Studio and Stories to develop a vision for the site. Key aims of the vision by Heatherwick was to create a new Green Heart as a focus for the future Broad Marsh development, and to rebuild the lost street connections which set the brief for our designs. The Green Heart is one part of a sequence of public realm spaces within the wider Broad Marsh designed by Townshend Landscape Architects, and delivered by Nottingham City Council. The scheme used grant funding secured from Central Government through the Transforming Cities programme.

How does this public space bring people together, encourage inclusivity, and make a positive environmental impact to the wider place? 

An important part of the brief was to create a place unique to Broad Marsh that the public could relate to. Historically, the site was at the base of the sandstone cliff that Nottingham Castle sits on, and is close to the entrance of the City of Caves. The concept was to carve into the site topography, reinforcing the strong geological context, and providing the foundations to the design by creating undulating areas of planting and pathways, with pocket spaces and seating for people to use and enjoy. Local sandstone was selected as the main material as part of a low carbon approach, and which reflected the colour of the Nottingham sandstone cliff face and introducing a warm colour palette to the space. Key to the design was incorporating a wetland area that would absorb rainwater from the hard surfacing of the adjacent Collin Street, reflecting the importance of wetland habitats and in reference to the historic marsh. This formed a key design aspiration for the Green Heart, to bring the ‘marsh’ back into Broad Marsh, and for it to be visible as an urban pond. A large English Oak tree acts as a landmark and meeting point, with several sandstone boulders positioned nearby to create a place for gathering and seating. A long bench that arcs through the planting allows people to enjoy and experience nature while they sit. The boulders across the site carve out playful niches between the planting and pathways.