Project Details
Project
Quarry Hill Campus
Location
Leeds, England
Date
November 2019
About The Project
The Quarry Hill Campus is one of the first developments to be completed as part of an impressive £300m redevelopment project. Sitting side by side with the West Yorkshire Playhouse, it has been designed to be an essential part of Leed’s vibrant Cultural Quarter.
As well as providing expansion for Leeds College of Music, the new £60m Leeds City College development will also provide stimulating, state of the art new home for the college’s School of Creative Arts and School of Social Science which welcomed students for the first time in September 2019.
Gateway Court and Playhouse Square are included as part of the larger development, enhancing approximately 0.4ha of existing green space and creating a further 0.2ha which includes 33 new trees. Shrub planting and grassed terraces.
What we did
Re-form, one of Leeds leading landscape architects, were tasked with softening a once hard urban landscape with the use of landscaping and planting. Located next to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, planners were keen to develop a continuous public realm throughout the site. With this in mind, Re-form opted to add some welcome greenery in the way of trees along the front of the building, as well as around the entrance and raised parking area. Three large planters were also used to break up, what was previously an exposed area at the lower level front.
In order to give the trees the best chance of successful establishment, the team worked with Howard Civil Engineering combining Green-trees specially formulated Geo-Cellular Raft System soil and subsoil, with the unique, patented Geo-Cellular Raft System. With a perforated pipe that sits around the root ball, the Mona Relief Grande provides a cost effective, easy to use irrigation solution via a capped filler pipe. Using Terram Root Guard where necessary and finishing the tree pits off with the Fortress Grille, this allowed paving to be laid seamlessly, practically up to the trees themselves.
