design and access statements

Design and access statements

A ‘common sense’ approach to creating design and access statements must prevail, says Danielle Ellis. At Danetree Village, the Design and Access Statement is the book of the masterplan and demonstrates a contextual understanding of the site.

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Project context and background

Turley Associates is the masterplanner for Danetree Village; a connected sustainable urban extension to Daventry. Danetree Village is located on the east side of Daventry covering an area of open land of around 207ha. It is envisaged that the development will provide over 5,000 dwellings, 16ha of employment land, two district centres, extensive community facilities and approximately 51ha of open space and structural landscaping.

Daventry is part of the South Midlands growth area; allocated to accommodate 10,800 dwellings between 2001-2021. In March 2007 a strategic outline application was submitted to Daventry District Council and to the West Northamptonshire Development Corporation on behalf of the Danetree Village Consortium. The application site straddles the narrow confines of the boundary of the Development Corporation, and is administered by both decision-making authorities.

An integral part of the project planning at Danetree Village was the creation of a Design and Access Statement, which describes the design team’s analysis, explains the philosophy of approach and advocates the form of development proposed. The technical purpose of a Design and Access Statement is to demonstrate a contextual understanding of the site, explain the emergence of the scheme, present the scheme’s characteristics, and provide a framework for the delivery of quality in built form.

The Design and Access Statement is the book of the masterplan, and it is a matter of great concern that many Design and Access Statements lack rigour – as is the inappropriate validation of applications where they fail to meet an acceptable standard.

In process terms, Design and Access Statements should evolve in parallel with the scheme’s development and not be written once the design is complete. As a matter of best practice, Turley Associates has been producing similar design statements to support planning applications for many years and welcomes the statutory requirement for their preparation and submission. All proposals should be analysis-led, be site specific and be guided by a robust methodology/philosophy.

At Danetree Village, the Design and Access Statement describes the fundamental organising concept that the structure of the urban form should echo ‘the fields beneath’, along with a series of high-level guiding principles. From this evolved a series of structural components expressed in the form of a Concept Plan. Following detailed community consultation and iteration with specialist co-consultants, the masterplan was prepared. The scale of development, with a predicted population of around 12,000 in a concentrated area, will allow the generation of a strong sense of place – in fact a sequence of places of individual yet coherent character to be developed over a period of 14 years.

These places will be defined by their relationship to open space and structural landscape. The framework for development must be robust, flexible and future proof.


It cannot be the role of the Design and Access Statement to provide meaningless prescription in the form of detailed architectural design codes, building and use footprints or massing

To design in too great detail at this stage of the process would be counterproductive, administratively awkward and fail the best interests of client and community. The more troubling aspects of the Filton decision (a recent ‘test case’ decision at Filton which caused the Design and Access Statement to be substantially revised. The original application was rejected on the basis that the illustrative designs lacked ‘clarity and coherence’ and ‘gave insufficient detail about the approximate location and scale of buildings’) suggest that more information, more certainty and more definition is required at this outline stage, and that the Design and Access Statement should more explicitly describe and fix the proposals.

For a project the scale and size of Danetree Village, such a level of information would effectively move the application from a strategic masterplan to a detailed application – this would be so time consuming and prohibitively costly as to prevent such strategic submissions from coming forward. This in turn would inevitably result in a failure to deliver much needed housing.

Despite the indications of the Filton decision for Danetree Village, it cannot be the role of the Design and Access Statement to provide meaningless prescription in the form of detailed architectural design codes, building and use footprints or massing. Filton should not be taken as an all embracing precedent for Design and Access Statements in every circumstance. A common sense approach must prevail and this may include the more considered use of conditions to exact the right amount of information at the right stage of the process.
Danielle Ellis, urban designer, Turley Associates, London.

Possible interpretation of the masterplan

  • Key project points
  • Connected
  • Enduring
  • Place


Practice details
Turley Associates
http://www.turleyassociates.co.uk
dellis@turleyassociates.co.uk

For .pdf file, please click here

 

The advantage of the masterplan’s linear form, with a main spine of movement, is a sustainable structure where all residents will have easy access to local centres, schools, open space and be within 400m of a bus route connecting to the town centre in both directions on an 8 minute frequency. So whilst Borough Hill sits between the town and its urban extension, the linear structure will allow a better connection and more sustainable organisation than moreconventionally located edge of town extensions
The masterplan identified the movement and infrastructure network; allocated built and unbuilt land; described the landscape structure; provided a land budget of uses, densities and scale; and identified nodes of activity and neighbourhoods. The movement network and neighbourhoods are the subject of high level ‘design codes’ providing robust characterisations, but not detailed prescription.
Possible interpretation of the masterplan