Loop Design Award Winners

Image showing active travel right outside the Cunard building

The Strand and Glade of Light win categories for Public Space and Landscape Design

We’re proud to announce that BCA Landscape has won Loop Design Awards for Liverpool’s The Strand and Manchester’s Glade of Light within their respective categories.

The Strand

In the Public Space Category, the Strand won for the human-centric and environmentally conscious remodelling of the epicentre of Liverpool’s renowned waterfront.

The project aims to contribute to the mitigation of climate change risks, increase the resilience to climate change effects, improve health and well-being and improve air quality and biodiversity. This includes planting 130 new trees and Sustainable Drainage Systems [SuDS] with permeable paving and traffic drainage being directed into these living systems and help alleviate flooding in the area. The trees and SuDS are also being future monitored to track their impact on pollution reduction, urban cooling and flood prevention.

Traffic junctions and lanes have been removed to provide new cycling and walking infrastructure to promote active travel and create new people friendly places and designated safer cyclist routes in and out of the city.

The Strand: Category Winner [Loop Design Awards Website]

Glade of Light

The Glade of Light memorial has won in the Landscape Design category, for its design which aimed to embrace a more dynamic and contemporary form of memorialisation. The design ideas and thoughts behind ‘The Glade of Light’ have always come from a place of heart-felt respect and deep sympathy. We believe design is about and for people and it is not a fixed thing on a plan, but consists of an ever-changing, living and shifting series of moments.

We envisioned a wild and beautiful garden that embraces you. A treasured place where you feel connected with nature. A grove of Oak, Birch, Hawthorn and Pine, are gathered together around the quiet glade. Inspired by the colours and wild beauty of the nearby Peak District Heathlands, the planting within the sunny glade of grasses, heathers, bulbs and perennials changes throughout the year. It is a soft and green setting within the busy city, a place for people to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Our wish for this garden is that it will encourage everyone to pause and search for stillness.

The Glade of Light: Category Winner [Loop Design Awards Website]

hythe

Hythe

Design Team: BCA Landscape

The second completed development within the Four Bridges neighbourhood and on the recently completed Tower Road, Hythe is a Grade A office building with waterfront views that achieves BREAAM Excellent accreditation.

The landscape is designed to allow access to the dock edge whilst also integrating seamlessly with the Tower Road streetscape and provides facilities for a continually evolving transport network with a scalable, green-roofed cycle store included and a car park with electric vehicle charging points. The car park area is designed to double up as an events space that can be utilised either by the Hythe building or the adjacent and forthcoming Egerton Village.

Sustainable drainage (SuDS) have also been included to continue the work that has already been achieved on the Tower Road streetscape scheme with all surface water draining either into bio-retention beds or through permeable paving to infiltrate into the ground below. Any excess water during storm events is held and released at a sustainable rate into the dock, rather than the existing drainage network.

Native planting has been included in both the bio-retention beds and meadow areas to increase the site’s contribution to bio-diversity in the neighbourhood.

Eberle Street

Design Team: BCA Landscape, AMEY

Eberle Street has long been established as the heart of the LGBT Community here in Liverpool, comprising of multiple night clubs, bars and the once world famous Garlands nightclub. As it stood, the street infrastructure was unloved with poor paving, lighting and cellar doors making for an environment that didn’t appeal to pedestrians during the day, and created obstacles for the high footfall after dark.

BCA Landscape created a unique identity to the once undesirable street, through the use of a bespoke contemporary paving and matching lights, with subtle hints to Judy Garland’s ‘Yellow Brick Road’ dotted along the route. The use of a strong geometric pattern draws people up the street and along the way can be found bespoke paving units which have key characters and elements of the ‘Wizard of Oz’, from the iconic red shoes to Toto and even the famous Emerald City.

‘’Eberle Street is a hub of Liverpool’s night time economy and LGBT community so its redesign required an imaginative approach that had the verve and style to celebrate its unique position and elevate it to a prominence it richly deserves. Once complete it will also greatly enhance the experience of the Commercial District and promote the north-south walking routes between the district and the rest of the city centre. As the nation recently saw with Granby Street’s Turner Prize winning transformation, meaningful regeneration has to be led by those who live and work in that area and the input from the business community has been a key part of the entire process.’’ – Jim Gill, Chairman of the Commercial District BID,
which represents more than 850 businesses

April 7th 2021July 6th 2022

Overhead Railway

A new stone and bronze interpretative celebration of Liverpool’s world famous Dockers Umbrella – designed by BCA Landscape – has just been craned in to place in the position of the original Overhead Railway Pier Head Station.

By 1880, Liverpool’s dock network was virtually complete. So too was the congestion along the Dock Road, as carriages, omnibuses, lorries, carts and drays all plied the route.

An elevated railway had been proposed as early as 1852 but came to nothing. In 1888 the Liverpool Overhead Railway Company was formed and the world’s first electric elevated railway opened along the waterfront in 1893. The new segregated waterfront cycleway will follow the old railway route.

Find out more about the project here

Liverpool Waterfront

Design Team: BCA Landscape, Amey, LCC, Graham Construction

Budget: £22 million

Awards: Winner – CIHT Healthy Transport Award | Highly commended – CIHT Creating Better places | Commended – CIHT Infrastructure Award | Longlisted – International Loop Design People’s Choice Award

We were awarded both LOOP Design and CIHT

The Strand is at the epicentre of Liverpool’s renowned waterfront, surrounded by Grade II* listed buildings and the infamous Liver Building. This revamp of The Strand is both human-centric and environmentally conscious. The regeneration scheme exemplifies the very best of green infrastructure projects, providing a new sustainable urban drainage system with on-going data analysis for storm waterflow, water filtration and air quality, keeping us connected via safer walkways, new pedestrian squares, segregated cycle lanes and and introducing large canopies of trees and celebrating the city’s heritage.

“Liverpool City Centre is changing for the better. The improvements to The Strand, reducing traffic, more space for pedestrians, and especially the new top-quality cycle lanes, are immense. It will do so much to reconnect our world-famous Waterfront with the rest of town.” – Liverpool Cycling Commissioner, Simon O’Brien

Vote for ‘The Strand’ in the Loop Design – People’s Choice Awards (vote closes: 15th September 2022)