Thorp Arch Estate, 2010

Working in collaboration with Ripley Capital think architecture+design have carried out a strategic study of the Thorp Arch Estate on behalf of Rockspring Hanover Property Unit Trust. The Estate which has its origins as a munitions factory in 1942 for the MoD is approximately 380 acres and has been in private ownership for some fifty years. Presently the site is home to a variety of large and small manufacturing businesses, as well as warehousing, retail, leisure and service industries. The site has two million sq ft of accommodation and 2,500 people are employed in the various businesses on the Estate.

The strategic study includes a review of the "physical" estate, both building stock and landscape, together with planning uses legibility and circulation routes. Further studies explore a number of possible future development strategies for the site which are designed to enhance and improve the existing Estate both in terms of value and a location for developing new businesses and other uses. These include the potential for further leisure activity on the site. The leisure base is to sit alongside the existing retail centre forming a public core of activity. Uses would also take advantage of the large areas of undeveloped site and connections with the national cycleway which adjoins the Estate.

The study explores the potential for providing an estate wide energy centre, with the potential of serving both the Estate and the adjoining British Library complex and HMP.

By utilising the estates two primary entrances the potential to provide a segregated traffic solution that separates heavy and light traffic has been developed.

The strategy includes a possible phasing of future development together with potential plans for an initial phase developing new employment accommodation.