Ebbsfleet Garden
City is emerging from a post-industrial landscape of former chalk quarries,
sandwiched between the River Thames and the Kent green belt. The Garden City
will include a grid of seven new city-scale parks, creating a healthy and happy
place to live.
Ebbsfleet in Kent
will be the site of the first new Garden City of the 21st Century. It is also
the largest of the ten NHS Healthy
New Town initiatives that show how land can deliver health benefits. This
has created an exciting opportunity for landscape professionals and
multidisciplinary teams worldwide.
The Ebbsfleet
Development Corporation and the NHS have launched an international design competition.
Managed by the Landscape Institute, the competition invites the best minds in
the landscape profession to take on the challenge of creating a truly modern
healthy city.
The
LI’s work on public health and landscape demonstrates the growing evidence
base linking green spaces and healthy living. Driving forward this important
link is at the heart of this project.
The site at
Ebbsfleet is an exciting prospect for this competition. Located 17 minutes from
Central London and two hours from Paris and Brussels, it is a major railway hub
between London and Europe. It also has a unique topography that entrants could
use to enliven any design concept. The site boasts Thames frontages, lakes,
extensively quarried chalk hills and valleys, and even historic sites such as
the Gilbert Scott-designed church in Northfleet.
The competition
invites ideas from both individual practitioners and landscape-led teams.
(Multidisciplinary teams including artists and engineers are particularly
encouraged.) There is also a category for student entrants. Entries should
address the shape of the whole city, rather than just one site; the NHS hopes
that submissions will inspire initiatives that look beyond Ebbsfleet to the
wider health of the nation.
Dan Cook, Chief
Executive of the Landscape Institute, said: "We applaud the leadership
Ebbsfleet Development Corporation is demonstrating in launching a landscape-led
design competition to help plan the new site. This decision should be an
inspiration to other cities as it is a real opportunity to make a step-change
in how we think about place creation. We have the opportunity to take a truly
modern and multi-disciplinary approach at Ebbsfleet which could end up becoming
a model for the creation of healthy new cities across the world.
"The
competition will also challenge landscape professionals to demonstrate the
leadership potential of their industry in showing the way towards creating
healthy living environments and how good design can powerfully incorporate
green infrastructure into a project. We are passionate about the role landscape
can play in our everyday lives, as well as developing the landscape
professionals of the future – which is why it was also important to us to have
a student category in to the competition."
