HALO Shortlisted in Ebbsfleet Healthy Garden City Competition
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HALO Shortlisted in Ebbsfleet Healthy Garden City Competition

Published on 30 August 2018

JTP’s collaborative submission with BMD & PBA to the Ebbsfleet Healthy Garden City ideas competition has made a shortlist of five, from an international pool of entries.

The two-stage competition, run by the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, the Landscape Institute and NHS England, invited multi-disciplinary design teams to put forward “radical” concepts for a Garden City, centred around healthy living through connections to the landscape.

The post-industrial landscape of Ebbsfleet, Kent, is sandwiched between the River Thames and Kent’s green belt, and has a unique topography featuring rivers, lakes, and quarried chalk hills and valleys.

A consortium comprising BMD, JTP and PBA has been shortlisted for its proposal, entitled ‘HALO', which was developed during a collaborative design process involving a charrette workshop with all team members.

HALO aims to deliver healthy infrastructure to residents’ doorsteps. By providing accessible, attractive and inspirational places, residents will be  motivated to engage in physical activity and sustainable food production as a natural part of their daily lives.

HALO comprises four key interventions that, in combination, overlay Ebbsfleet like a web. These are:

  • Hives - Access to Others: Innovative activity hubs that foster social and community engagement. 
  • Arcs - Reconnecting to nature: A regional ‘people highway’ prioritising pedestrians and cyclists, providing uninterrupted access to nature and stitching together fragmented landscapes
  • Links - Access for all: A localised green grid network enabling direct access from door to nature and creating wildlife-rich environments
  • Organics - Edible Landscapes: Focal points for food production and habitat creation

These interventions respond to local context through a range of typological treatments that are reflective of local landscape character, building a richness of experience that is unique to Ebbsfleet, while addressing the fundamental prerequisites for healthy living.

Ebbsfleet Garden City will be the largest of ten healthy new towns being developed across the UK for NHS England, to demonstrate how the effective use and integration of landscape into new neighbourhoods can deliver health benefits.

Stage 2 of the competition called for detailed proposals that built upon the concepts of Stage 1, applied to the Blue Lake site, a disused quarry within the proposed Ebbsfleet Garden City. The submissions were accompanied by a presentation to a judging panel made up of representatives from the competition partners, as well as other esteemed industry figures.

The wining team will be announced on 6 September 2018 at the Landscape Institute Annual Conference.