Node presents… Curzon Wharf

Node is delighted to share our exciting new landscape design for Curzon Wharf, a new mixed-use development with a landmark 52 storey tower in Birmingham city centre, located adjacent to Aston Junction on the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal.

We have been working as part of a collaborative design team with our client Woodbourne Group and fellow consultants Associated Architects, CBRE, Cundall, PJA, and Core 5.

Our vision

Our design vision is: ‘to create a high-quality sustainable destination along the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal and Aston Junction, with a strong sense of place rooted in its own heritage but looking to the future in its design’.

The landscape masterplan

The landscape masterplan creates a unified design for the whole of the site, with a shared plaza, strong green infrastructure and a destination space adjacent to the canal that responds directly to the historic context of the site.

Key design components

The concept for the site shows the following key components:

• Pedestrian and vehicular access points and new arrival spaces at these points which will incorporate high quality materials and utilise planting to help soften proposals.
• The creation of two triangular plazas: one located in the centre of the site and the other fronting onto Dartmouth Circus.
• A key destination space adjacent to the canal which responds to the historic character of the canal junction and the listed bridges.
• A strong linear geometry that responds to the architectural design before becoming more fluid as you get closer to the canal.
• Provision of trees and soft planting to help define spaces around the main plaza.
• The creation of buffer planting to Aston Road and Dartmouth Circus to help screen and soften the development.
• The creation of a shared space throughout the site with a defined route for vehicles through the use of seating, planters and tree planting to help define the edge of the carriageway.
• The opening up of views towards the canal and listed bridges from the arrival space and destination plaza adjacent to the canal by lowering and removing parts of the existing canalside wall.
• The integration of seating, street furniture and lighting to make the public realm function well during the day, evening and at night.

The site

The current form of the site presents a set of challenges, surrounded by the contrasting context of Dartmouth Circus and Aston Expressway to one side and the tranquillity and beauty of the canal corridor to the other, is aimed to be transformed into a public realm space which includes a series of four sub-areas with their own distinctive characters:

1. Aston Gateway, a welcoming entrance to the scheme, allowing accessibility to the site for all and better visual connections with the canalside.

2. The Plaza, a strong triangular shared surface space where pedestrians and cyclists have priority, defined by hard and soft landscape design to respond to the strong geometry of the angular buildings.

3. Canalside, contrasting to the central plaza destination space adjacent to the canal, the Canalside is designed to highlight a linkage to the site’s industrial past via opening up views towards listed bridges and with the use of heritage materials such as blue engineering brick, wood and Corten steel.

4. Dartmouth Circus/ Middleway, a green front door to the development from the north. Buffer planting to Aston Road and Dartmouth Circus enables screening of the hostile environment created by the road infrastructure at the same time as softening the edge of the development.

We have designed a human scale public space that legibly declares its function and allows accessibility, amenity, microclimate, levels, sustainable urban drainage, planting, street furniture, ecology, lighting and play, health and well-being to interact in a truly unique environment.

Look out for future blog posts on our heritage and townscape and visual impact assessment input to this exciting project.