Year | 2023
Location | Beaumont Leys, Leicester
Clients |E2 Community Hub
Transforming a derelict wasteland in Beaumont Leys into an Urban Garden to inspire a greener and healthier future for the community.
The Sheffield School of Architecture Live Projects student team has forged a partnership with local charity E2, focusing on designing a sensory garden and strategising the garden’s growth. E2, a charity in Leicester, champions community and youth endeavours. Among its key projects is The Urban Garden Project. From a once-forgotten wasteland in Beaumont Leys, the vision is to craft a sanctuary where children and adults alike can delve into nature and establish a profound bond with their environment. This garden will provide a safe, stimulating, and interactive environment for children of all abilities to play and explore the senses.
After six weeks of organizing the urban garden, designing the sensory wall, and communicating with different parties, the project team brought several aspects of outputs:
Handbooks of the garden
For those people who may want to know about the garden, these handbooks not only include the different aspects of this garden, they are also a blueprint for the same types of gardens to be built.
Sensory wall design
The main motive of the sensory wall is to engage with kids so that it stimulates their senses. The five senses were included in various design elements.
Mini projects
This includes suggestions for potential mini-projects that may be held within The Urban Garden as the project grows and more funding becomes available. These projects are designedto be collaborative, to include different parties with the aim of being sustainable long-term.
Publicity material
In order to achieve more directional and wider publicity, the project team designed leaflets, posters, and Instagram pages. This aims to engage different groups of people to join in on the process and grow the garden’s Community Garden Replicability Detailed Engagement Strategy community engagement.
In the process of design, the project team engaged with various groups, including a local E2 youth group who the project team held an engagement session with. The project team also looked at similar case study gardens in order to find out what was successful in other places. Working with different parties, the team continued the design and research in a collaborative and inclusive way.
Credits:
Mentor: Kam Fai Tai
Client: E2 Community Hub
Location: Beaumont Leys, Leicester
Students: Jonathan Mee, Ester Yeboah, Elizabeth Clarke, Dennis Karolev, Abdal Karim Rabi, Evelin Putri, Sarah Carson, Parth Rajesh Chauhan, Samuel Marshal, Leyi Ren, Ziyan Wang, Honghao Zhou
