Introduction

Proxima Park, in Waterlooville, Hampshire, demonstrates how we can challenge the sterile, one-size-fits-all industrial estate template through the Shaping Better Places framework. A specially commissioned swift tower, sculptural biototems and wildlife-friendly planting are among the many biodiversity initiatives at this new business park, providing habitat for nature, opportunities for everyday wildlife encounter and contributing to employee and community well-being.

Background

Arc came on board from the start at Proxima, shaping the landscape design to bring more features for wildlife into a conventional industrial park, and working with some enlightened clients at LaSalle who wanted to develop it for the natural world, keen to create a better experience for their tenants and for the local community. Proxima spreads over 24 acres and overlooks a very big new development, Berewood, built by Grainger, which included new schools, new country parks, new nature trails. We wanted to try and bring a flavour of all this into the industrial setting, working hard to integrate this permeability, and into a partnership too between the respective development teams. Our involvement with the park was also part of a suite of Shaping Better Places initiatives we supported across LaSalle’s built assets and followed our approach to this real estate investment titan in 2017, urging them to act to address biodiversity loss across their ESG strategy and property portfolio.

Shaping Better Places

Shaping Better Places (SBP) delivers a scoping assessment across the full range of ESG, SRI, Net Gain and ‘secular’ performance criteria and maps out the route to efficient and effective implementation. The scoping work for Proxima provided recommendations for actions set within LaSalle’s Four Pillars ESG strategy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, gathering baseline local environmental information (people, place and nature). This work identified the best opportunities for biodiversity gains, climate adaptation, stakeholder engagement and community outreach, setting out how Proxima Park could exemplify the sustainability ambitions and objectives of the whole broader Berewood Masterplan.

Designing for Nature (People are Nature!)

Arc oversaw the commission and installation of intentional habitat for wildlife, all designed to be as appealing to people as it is to nature. Drawn from our makers’ network, commissions include Artecology’s carved oak Biototems and the Green & Blue ceramic bee posts, Grass Roof Co.’s bike shelters and artist Will Nash’s iconic swift tower. Together with Arc’s palette of supporting planting as well as pond creation, there are walking, breathing and stopping spaces, views across and among a renaturalised environment, and wherever possible and breeding, feeding, refuge and nesting for bird, insect and pondlife.

Proxima Swift Tower

Artist Will Nash produces beautiful, outdoor sculptures but with a naturalised feel to them and often incorporating habitat. One of the things that Will does in an exemplary fashion is to create nesting towers for high priority conservation wild bird species, in particular swifts. Swifts really need buildings to nest in and of course, we put out nest boxes for them or encourage integral boxes into new builds, but that's not always possible depending on the fabric of the buildings. So at Proxima, the plan and the solution was to put up a 7-metre tower with a set of nest boxes at the top. The tower has a larch exterior with multiple ‘eaves’ housing 12 Swift nest boxes, and 6 House Martin nest cups. It has an amazing sculptural quality to it, you can see it from a long way off, and directly from the playground of the adjacent school and houses. So it provides an excellent opportunity for citizen science and engagement, including in the monitoring of it, to see what happens. It's a landmark feature as well as it genuinely being a piece of constructed and intentional habitat-making. When it populates, it’ll be a centre for stunning aerial display too!

Outcomes

It was a long, complicated process, with Proxima’s ownership changing hands halfway, but thanks to persistence and our ecosystem wildlife designers and makers, Proxima went beyond industry standard BREEAM Excellent and BNG. Swifts are well and truly on the radar with Grainger celebrating their neighbours too. If you visited Proxima this summer, you’d have heard the sound of the new swift ‘lure’ early in the morning and in the evening. The wild strawberries were in flower, the broom hedge was coming out in white and yellow, and the comfrey was next on the to-bloom list. On our recce with Will last November, it was the Salvia we’d specified you’d have seen, striking bright blue against the standard issue alu-panel cladding of the building. We’re looking forward to tracking the ecological and social impact and halo effects!

Project Team

Arc Biodiversity & Climate, Artecology, LaSalle Investment Management, Equation