Features
February
2011
ASA
has been asked to support St Edmundsbury Borough Council,
Suffolk, (SEBC) in preparing a Stage 1 application to
the Heritage Lottery Fund's Parks for People programme,
for Abbey Gardens.
Abbey
Gardens is set within the precinct of what was one of
the largest and most important Benedictine Houses in
the country. While what remains is largely ruinous,
the surviving precinct walls and main gates (including
the magnificent 14th century Abbey Gate and 12th century
Norman Tower), the ruins themselves, the relative lack
of development of the entire precinct area and the immediately
adjacent historic town of Bury form a unique and evocative
setting for this public park.
The
application will be submitted at the end of February
and it is anticipated SEBC will be applying for around
£3 million.
September
2010
ASA has been commissioned by The Campaign
for Greener Healthcare and the Forestry Commission to
prepare design guidance for the NHS. The new guidance
is provisionally titled Creating Outdoor Spaces for
Health and Well-being and it is hoped that this
will help establish good practice across the NHS Estate,
in terms of developing outdoor spaces which have a genuine
therapeutic function for patients, staff and visitors.
It will also potentially have a wider application for
other non-NHS institutions such as special schools,
and nursing homes – anywhere which could benefit from
a ‘healing environment’.
Though small pockets of good practice
do exist in the NHS, particularly with regard to mental
health provision, the majority of NHS facilities are
not making the most of their outdoor spaces. There is
enormous scope for improving this situation.
The study
should be complete early next year with an expected
publication date of spring 2011.
March
2010
Design
for Play: a guide to creating successful play spaces
has won a Highly Commended Award in the Landscape
Institute 2009 Awards.
Aileen
Shackell was the principal author for this document,
jointly commissioned by Play England, and the Department
for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), with co-authors
being Nicola Butler, Phil Doyle and David Ball.
This
document is the first detailed guidance on play design
to be published in the UK. It presents a compelling
case for moving from a formulaic approach to designing
play spaces, to one which is focused on the creation
of playful landscapes. The overall message, and specifically
the development within the Guide of the 10 design principles,
will ensure that play space design remains from now
on firmly embedded within the landscape design sphere.
Over
21,000 copies of the guidance have been distributed
and over 14,000 copies were downloaded from Play England's
website within the 3 months following publication. The
DCSF considers the document to be one of their most
successful documents ever published.
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