Bath architectural practices Grant Associates and Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios have been appointed to lead the long-awaited regeneration of one of the city’s largest undeveloped former industrial areas.
The firms will work on plans for the historic former Bath Press site for specialist heritage developer City & Country, which acquired it earlier this year.
The high-profile site formerly housed the Pitman Press printing works, before becoming vacant in 2007 and undergoing demolition 10 years later to allow for redevelopment.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBStudios), best known in Bath for its work on the Roman Baths Clore Learning Centre and World Heritage Centre, and landscape specialists Grant Associates will collaborate on the development of the western end of 5.3-acre site on Lower Bristol Road.
Essex-based City & Country will be partly delivering the scheme, which has existing planning consent.
The family-owned developer said the western end of the site had huge potential, with a “significantly enhanced architectural solution” to provide more homes in what is a well-connected, urban location.
Having worked with FCBStudios and Grant Associates in the past, City & Country was keen to commission them again, saying their imagination and reputation would deliver a design fitting for this main route into Bath.
FCBStudios founding partner Keith Bradley said the firm was delighted to be working with City & Country again “to bring experienced development, sensitivity and design ambition to its first Bath project”.
“For FCBS, this is our home city and have recently worked on some of Bath’s preeminent historic buildings, including the award-winning Bath Abbey Footprint project, and the adjacent Roman Baths and Pump Room Archway visitor facilities,” he added.
“We are looking forward to creating some much needed, high-quality housing in the city, to follow the successes of our London, Manchester and Cambridge residential work.
“This includes the RIBA Stirling Prize Accordia Project, which we worked on with Grant Associates.”
City & Country design & planning director Simon Vernon-Harcourt added: “FCBStudios has an amazing reputation for delivering sensitive and responsive architectural projects throughout the country, and I was eager to work with them again, especially as it is in their home city of Bath.
“Grant Associates will add a wonderful landscape focus to the design.
“I have been lucky to work with some great architects and landscape architects over the years, and I know that brilliant design is key to making great places for community to flourish and grow, and to provide buildings that add to an area, and we can be proud of.”
Grant Associate director Keith French added: “This is a site layered in history, offering an important gateway into our home city and an amazing opportunity to bring it back to life.
“We’re excited at the prospect of working collaboratively and engaging with residents, and to bring our placemaking and landscape led residential experience to this important piece of the city.”
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, which also has offices in London, Manchester and Belfast, was formed more than 40 years ago and today is viewed as one of the UK’s most progressive and ethical architectural practices.
It won the coveted Stirling Prize for Building of the Year in 2008 for its Accordia Housing scheme in Cambridge and has been shortlisted twice – for its extension to the Manchester School of Art in 2014 and last year for its University of Warwick’s Faculty of Arts Building.
Grant Associates is globally recognised for its environmentally driven work such as the iconic Supertrees and Gardens by the Bay in Singapore and, more recently, the Tower of London Superbloom project, part of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations 2022.
It has also drawn up the overall landscape strategy for the Brabazon neighbourhood on the former Filton Airfield site in Bristol and, working with Bath architectural practice Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, has created a new central African forest habitat for some of the world’s most critically endangered species on Bristol Zoological Society’s Bristol Zoo Project site.
Essex-based specialist developer City & Country snapped up the high-profile 5.3-acre site on Lower Bristol Road for £13.8m earlier this year and announced it intends to build more than 250 homes on it along with commercial space.
City & Country is active on a number of projects across the South West, including in Bristol, where it is transforming the Grade II listed former General Hospital into a development of 206 homes with an upmarket retail and restaurant.
Other City & Country projects include the conversion of former prison sites at Dorchester and Gloucester into apartments and a housing development at Burderop Park, near Swindon.
