Snow Hill Wharf lies in the distinctive, historic industrial townscape setting of Birmingham’s Gun Quarter.
The site’s wider landscape context is dominated by hard urban edges and a compact, low rise grid of industry and residential development. We created a hierarchy of outdoor spaces that address both the scale of the street scene, and the strong geometrical engineering of the canal edge. These spaces introduced attractive green infrastructure into this otherwise hard, urban setting.
The Gun Quarter encapsulates the unique qualities of the ‘city of a thousand trades’. The use of materials and the history of engineering is expressed within the design for each garden. The landscape strategy focused on the creation of a hierarchy of external green spaces, and entrances were emphasised with trees and planting, with gardens linking to the canal edge. On the buildings, each balcony was designed to offer views to the wider city, or into high quality garden spaces, allowing people to connect with nature and their city.
