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Studio Egret West offers the fusion of place specific architecture, urban design and landscape
Architecture is at it's best when it feels rooted to a site and appears effortless. The clients want their buildings to be special and for this reason Studio Egret West put aside conventional responses and allow new ideas to blossom, adding both value and surprise. The Future Clapham project is a good example of this, fusing a spiral library, health centre and 136 curvaceous apartments into a very constrained site. The result is a multi award winning project that eschews the norms.
Urban Design is about making places. The firm appreciate that it takes time to make a place; so they don't try to put a place into a strait jacket. They create flexible frameworks that gently evolve. They avoid the regurgitation of placatory statements about what makes a "good place". Instead they focus on how a place really is, how it feels as much as how it looks and what will make the biggest difference from the outset. Their strategic framework and architectural rejuvenation of Park Hill (Europe's longest listed building) in Sheffield is a good example of this, focusing on rebuilding the identity and lifestyle of a once loved place.
Landscape defines the glue. The team are particularly interested in the amplification of a place's natural assets either through magnifying a certain feature or through opening up lost connections. In the public realm they see their role as more than the prosaic sweeping away of clutter. That's just common sense! They like to add another dimension. Interventions that enliven released space, making them more memorable, productive and playful. Their public space strategy for Stratford is a good example of this with the signature element, "The Shoal" being a 250m long kinetic sculpture.
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