Reintroducing the Heart of Twerton

Project idea

The project, “Reintroducing the Heart of Twerton” aims to design the preexisting stadium, car park, and adjacent mixed use apartment complex into a single cohesive design that can serve as the central community space for Twerton, a specific district in Bath, England.

The area of Twerton has quite a rich history and strong sense of community, originally used to build council houses, but following multiple failed proposed projects in the past, Twerton is still generally considered a rough area. This is even more disappointing as Twerton overall is rather diverse, with a significant blind and deaf community, elderly community, and many young families. The community in Twerton is quite strong, with numerous different programs, events, and groups specific to the region, but the infrastructure itself is not conducive to establishing this sense of community.

There were three key issues in this area of Twerton, all of which ultimately is due to the lack of unity.

One was that the stadium itself, which could be a focal point for the area, lacked any sense of unity or cohesion. The entrance was not clearly marked or in any way significant, and signage accessibility was completely lacking. The stadium itself seemed to be a mere incoherent collection of separate parts of seating, with no overarching design.

The second issue regarded the large car park outside the stadium. Overall, this space was severely underutilized and dilapidated, with poor maintenance, uneven paving, and a waste of space due to the lack of need for parking for majority of the time.

Finally, the last issue regarded the “high street” along the main road in Twerton. Despite being called a “high street”, only one side of the road is actually a commercial area with shops, the other side being purely residential. This mismatch of residential area and commercial space causes greater disturbances to the residents and makes the shopping area less attractive. Additionally, the large road has a considerable amount of car traffic due to the surrounding commercial buildings and its use as a route from Bath to Bristol, increasing noise pollution for local residents.

Project description

The project solution addresses each of these three issues.

The stadium was completely redesigned to become a cohesive design wrapping around the entire football field with additional amenities for athletes, spectators, and even the public in general. The car park was completely redesigned into a public space with landscaping and even a small pavilion and playground, with car parking now reduced to a smaller underground parking area below the stadium. The commercial building area was then expanded and then split into a residential and commercial area, with the commercial shops now facing south to the public space and the residential area facing the other preexisting houses. Finally, the originally large two lane road was now redesigned to be a single lane shared space similar to exhibition road with access only for residents and buses.

Many features unified the entire design together, such as screens/projections on opposite sides of the public space, and the landscaping following a grid system set by the stadium plan.

Technical information

The stadium structure would consist of a primary steel structure with a timber substructure system for the ground floor and interior walls. This allows for the most efficient use of steel and timber, reducing the overall carbon footprint.

The greenery/landscaping would primarily consist of local flora in an attempt to increase biodiversity and rejuvenate the local area.

Our choices of materials were focused heavily on re-use and assuring we could limit our carbon footprint should this retrofit come to reality. Much of our design plans to utilise the original structure of both the Stadium and the High Street buildings. ​
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Where this isn’t possible, we plan to use timber sourced local to Bath as well as re-use any steel or brickwork that we would be demolishing instead of building onto. This ensures that we are minimising waste and promoting recycling throughout the project. ​

It is important to note that while we could list of potential timber suppliers, it would be difficult to know how truly local their supply is – as some companies may import. Due to this knowledge, we are avoiding naming any supplier by name in this report, as to not wrongly assume they are fully local sources.
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The choice of gabions was considered to accompany our public space, both to function with the natural slopes of the area, as well as to provide some more solid structure along our open spaces. ​
Using steel, re-used brickwork for the core, and stones that could be hopefully sourced locally, these provide some visual differentiation as well as a practical addition to our public space. ​

Documentation

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