FBM were shortlisted for the RIBA competition – the development of a brownfield site in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Our entry proposed a new residential urban quarter designed to establish a self-contained community with a design language that relates to the Mansfield’s urban, social, and heritage contexts. Each building in the proposal projected its own architectural identity, whilst contributing to the sense of the whole. Materials and details reference the scale and presence of the viaduct, with an intimate and safe interior to the layout and a more civic frontage along White Hart Street created by a rotunda building.

The proposal arose from a response to the complex site constraints and a value for its architectural heritage. Layers of change have become overlaid in this area through time. A medieval network of streets, which once converged upon the Market Place, is disrupted by the infrastructure of the Industrial Revolution, as monumental arches that support the railway viaduct impose themselves upon Mansfield’s town centre.

By placing a focus on fostering communal life, social interaction and community cohesion, we have created a network of carefully crafted streets, squares and gardens that mark a transition from the life of the city into the heart of a new community. Wide pedestrian routes from the south, east and west ensure that the plaza, gardens and courtyards are experienced as one continuous landscaped element, creating activity through pedestrian movement.

Historic buildings like the Maltings and warehouses along Dame Flogan Street, are another physical connection to Mansfield’s industrial heritage. Around the perimeter of this urban block, shops along White Hart Street and Church Street define streets and bound fragmented back lands. For all these topographical features, the site is deceptively complex.