The Crowhurst Design Guide
Project type: Design guide consultancy work
Project location: Crowhurst, East Sussex, UK
Deeper Green had the privilege to work alongside residents of the village of Crowhurst to assist with the preparation of a design guide to sit alongside the Parish’s Neighbourhood Development Plan. The document serves to specify more precisely particular criteria, which must be followed in development within the Village. It provides a closer focus of consideration to the special qualities and characteristics of the Parish, as distinct to the complementary but broader scale objectives of the High Weald AONB Housing Design Guide.
Key to Deeper Green’s involvement in the design guide project was an initial period of information gathering and a complete fact-finding emersion into the social, physical and historical context of the Parish.
The consultancy service was delivered through a mix of field studies and desktop research as well as a number of scoping workshops facilitated via video conference with the Steering Group. This early work afforded a more nuanced impression of the special qualities of place imbued in and around the village of Crowhurst and in so doing paved the way for a more informed contribution on the guide which better reflected the Parish’s values and objectives.
Above: The 1875 Ordnance Survey map showing the historic core of the village, field delineations and position of the gun powder mills along the Powdermill Stream. Station Road was yet to be built at the time of this OS survey. Reproduced with the permission of Ordnance Survey.
Deeper Green commenced their work with a version of the guide already drafted out as a set of individual contributions by the members of the Parish’s Steering Group. To this end, one of our tasks was to instil a consistent language and format into the compiled sections. Deeper Green were also able to make informed suggestions as a critical friend on shifting the emphasis on the sustainability section away from a prescriptive set of eco-features towards a set of performance benchmarks* which should allow developments to be better prepared to adapt to net-zero whole life carbon impacts. Deeper Green also prepared the section on Appreciation of the Context utilising some of the fascinating historical background that had been researched and sifted through.
* sustainability benchmarking for new development adopted the recommended standards in The RIBA’s 2030 Climate Challenge, 2019 by the Royal Institute of British Architects
Service provision included:
Scoping workshop
Mapping work
Graphic and drawn material
Field work, photography and desktop research
Layout design, written contributions and compilation
Critical friend
Above: Deeper Green also provided mapping services to the project and in particularly we prepared design intent plans for three allocated sites within the Parish to outline specific conceptual place-making responses to the particular qualities of each site.
Team credits:
Client: Parish of Crowhurst
Design and sustainability consultant: Deeper Green
Contributors: Crowhurst Parish Design Guide Task Group
Testimonials
On behalf of all our Group, I would like to thank you most sincerely for the very valuable contribution you have made to our work. Your creativity, professionalism, drafting abilities, flexibility and communication ease have made it a pleasure to work with you and resulted in a high-quality outcome. You achieved a demanding completion deadline.
