Seasons Greetings from our growing team!

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It's been another busy year for gcp. We took some time out at the beginning of December to enjoy a Christmas meal together in Bristol.

It’s always exciting to welcome more talent and experience to our growing team. Jonathan Arnold, Molly Sharps, Rose Nicholson, Ella Coomer, Caitlin Hawkins, Luke Gathergood and Joe Wood joined us in 2024 and we can’t wait to complete our office refurbishment to make space for even more projects, desks, break-out spaces and collaboration in January.

We can’t wait to see what is in store for us and for you, in 2025.

Season’s greetings to all and wishing you a very happy New Year.

Oxfordshire Cricket and gcp Architects Announce New Partnership

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gcp are excited to announce that we have recently partnered with Oxfordshire Cricket. At gcp, we have a passion for cricket and a reputation for developing the cricket facilities that often sit at the heart of a community. We’re looking forward to supporting Oxfordshire Cricket in their strategic priority areas, which (among others) include: Engaging children and young people, transforming women’s and girls’ cricket and supporting their communities.

You can read more about this partnership here.

#cricket #architecture #design #OxfordshireCricket

Employee Satisfaction #mentalhealthawareness

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For several years, gcp have been on a journey to evolve our mental health and wellbeing initiatives, putting our team and their specific needs at the center of change.

This year marked our fourth year of running an Employee Survey, and our first year of running a separate feedback forum where staff could share all the things we are currently doing well.

We are committed to running an annual employee satisfaction survey using quality questions for benchmarking, so that we can monitor trends in satisfaction and track how any changes impact the wider team.

Following feedback from the team on this survey and via our Employee Council, we have now introduced a monthly wellbeing survey so there is less time between whole office check-ins.

Whilst this process continues to evolve, we decided that this year we would celebrate the positive things we are currently doing. We asked employees to pick out the things that meant the most to them and most supported their wellbeing at work.

We shared this with the whole team during mental health awareness week and will be adding this feedback to our website over the coming months.

It is important to us, not only to improve our offering, but to maintain the things that employees like, need, and appreciate.

Easton Community Centre Review

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During July, we undertook a small project for Eastside Community Trust, coordinating with Stacey Yelland, CEO, to create scaled floorplans of Easton Community Centre. The community centre currently has a hall, café, nursery and various offices, and these spaces provide a base for activities for everyone. These include book clubs, coffee mornings, Lego clubs, litter picking and more, which contribute to their passion for building healthy neighbourhoods.

Over a 20-year period gcp have provided periodic support to the management team at Easton Community Centre when reviewing facility improvement. This latest support has been provided as a social value contribution linked to gcp winning a contract from Bristol City Council for design work to energy retrofit high-rise flats in the city centre.

We spent a day in the community centre measuring the entire building, with a short break to sample the excellent food, and then drew the plans up in the weeks following. These plans will provide a basis for any future improvement works that the community centre wish to undertake.

Appointment: Barnsley Gymnastics Club

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Following referral by a national sport equipment provider, gcp were appointed by Barnsley Gymnastics Club to assess the feasibility of the club’s relocation.

We firmly believe that sport development needs to happen in partnership with key local actors to have maximum impact in the community. We therefore consulted with key stakeholders including the National Governing Body for Gymnastics, the Council, and the local Active Partnership to develop the feasibility study. Alongside our strategic review, we developed a project brief and cost plan to give the club an accurate picture of the investment involved to enable their ongoing growth.

Sheffield Caribbean Sports Club: Public Consultation

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On the 16th of July gcp had the opportunity to engage with the public through a consultation event for the redevelopment of the Sheffield Caribbean Sports Club (SCSC).

The project came about as Des Smith, the founder of SCSC and BBC Sports Personality ‘Unsung Hero’ at the end of 2023, gaining traction and prompting the redevelopment of the club.

It was a lively day engaging with residents, coaches, children that play at the club and several volunteers for the club. It was great to receive an overwhelmingly positive response to the flexible approach we’ve taken on the design that allows for a functional, future proof space.
Additionally, the introduction of diverse opportunities for sports at masterplan level was welcomed by the community, and we were happy to see the growing excitement for developing better opportunities for women in sports from the club as well as from the public.

We’d like to thank everyone that attended as well as the club and volunteers for giving us a taste of the welcoming community that already exists at SCSC, it is our goal to create spaces that match the inspiring nature of the people that use them.

Osterley Cricket Club Redevelopment

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Following a devastating fire in 2022, which destroyed most their clubhouse, Osterley Cricket Club appointed gcp to prepare a detailed feasibility study for the redevelopment of their ground just off Tentelow Lane in Southall. The ground is set within the historic and listed landscape around Osterley House. The site is busy throughout the year and is also the home of Cademy FC, a vibrant and successful youth football club with links to many premier league football teams. The feasibility study quickly highlighted that in order to deliver the club’s vision for the site, a comprehensive masterplan was required to allow for a phased redevelopment as funding becomes available.   

 

The preliminary planning stage masterplan design includes a remodelled site with parking improvements and ecological enhancements to support biodiversity, a new clubhouse incorporating the remainder of the fire-damaged changing block, a secondary officials’ block with sensory space, and 3 new practice batting lanes. The planning design is a result of extensive collaboration between the club, the England & Wales Cricket Board and numerous stakeholders including Ealing Borough Council, Sport England, Middlesex Cricket, Middlesex FA, The Football Foundation and specialist subconsultants.

 

The final stage of the planning stage design development is a half day public consultation event at the club on Wednesday 10th July between 12 noon and 7pm. Following feedback received from the consultation designs will be revised and developed for planning submission by September 2024.

Green light for investment by McBraida plc

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After lengthy negotiations over the final Section 106 Agreement between all parties, we received last week on behalf of our client, McBraida plc the Planning Decision Notice that backs up the unanimous committee decision in favour of the development.

McBraida plc are a tier 1 aerospace component manufacturers with production facilities in both the UK and Poland. This approval allows them to realise their long-held ambition to more than double their head office footprint in Bridgeyate, between Bristol and Bath.

Throughout the development of the planning application, gcp as lead consultant, received valuable, impartial opinions on the proposal from development control and economic development officers at South Gloucestershire Council. They provided honest, clear and unambiguous comments on the proposal to the design team that allowed the planning design to evolve in response to site constraints and stakeholder consultations to ensure this vitally important investment in high technology engineering is secured for the county, the region and the UK.

The recent signing of the 106 Agreement clears the last hurdle before the green light can be pressed for the detailed design. We look forward to picking up a conversation with the client in the next few weeks to plan the next stages for this exciting and strategically important development.

Work about to start in St Nick’s Covered Market, Bristol!

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gcp has been working with a fantastic team at Bristol City Council to reimagine the central area of the Grade 2* Listed Covered Market in the highly popular St Nicholas Markets.

The Covered Market has not enjoyed the same footfall as other parts of the market; the scheme therefore provides a new destination to encourage visitors to experience the market in its fullness.

The scheme plays with structure, materials, and recesses to create a finely balanced proposal which achieves both commercially viable floorspace and breathing space to a previously cramped site.

Our Declaration of Carbon Neutrality

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Reducing our environmental impact has always been a key consideration in our design work. From delivering the UK’s first BREEAM Excellent sports centre in 2000, to becoming Passivhaus certified in 2007, and most recently generating whole life carbon assessments in 2019.

We are used to talking the talk, but in 2023 we decided it was time to walk the walk. Through our Employee Council we floated the idea of measuring our own carbon impact with a view to reducing carbon emissions as far as possible and becoming carbon neutral.

We reviewed various certification schemes and assessment methodologies including B-Corp, PAS 2060 and EcoVadis. The pros and cons were discussed in the Employee Council before a report was prepared for the Board. We settled on PAS 2060 as our methodology for measuring carbon emissions, creating a carbon reduction plan, and offsetting.

We can now release our Declaration of Carbon Neutrality for 2022-2023.

During this time, we reported on our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, alongside Scope 3 emissions for transport. Scope 1 relates to on-site emissions, e.g. gas boilers. Scope 2 relates to off-site emissions for energy used on-site e.g. electric boiler. Scope 3 covers all other emissions on and off site including relevant upstream and downstream emissions.

Our total carbon footprint for 2022/23 was 6.2tCO2e, split into 44% Scope 2 and 56% Scope 3 emissions.

Over our historic reporting period our Scope 2 emissions have reduced year on year due to:

  • Installing an efficient HVAC unit with heat recovery to reduce carbon emissions through ventilation as well as improving office air quality.

  • Changing all office lighting to better performing LED fittings.

  • UK grid decarbonization.

In the same period our Scope 3 emissions fell sharply due to COVID, but also due to:

  • Encouraging staff to cycle where appropriate to reduce travel emissions.

  • Reducing the number of on-site meetings where not necessary.

  • Encouraging low carbon transport methods where possible.

Whilst 2022/23 saw an increase in Scope 3 emissions from 2020/21 and 2021/22 this is primarily due to an increase in staff numbers alongside business returning somewhat to the pre-COVID norm. Ignoring the impact of COVID, our Scope 3 emissions have reduced by 46% from our 2018/19 base level. This is demonstrated by the graph below.

Whilst we continue to reduce our carbon emissions, there will always be a need to offset the remaining emissions to achieve carbon neutrality. As such from 2022 we started a tree planting program.

Initially our tree planting was based on a will to do the right thing rather than data, but now we report against PAS 2060 we are monitoring how many trees should be planted annually to cover our emissions.

Our offsetting strategy is based on Pending Issuance Units (PIUs) for predicted growth of saplings rather than Woodland Carbon Units (WCUs) which cover sequestered carbon in mature woodland. gcp will monitor the survival rate and growth of the trees over the next reporting period to accurately monitor the carbon absorption.

In February 2024 gcp planted 160 trees to offset our carbon emissions for the 2022/23 reporting period. This equates to approximately 160 tonnes of carbon over the lifetime of the trees. This is far greater than what was required to offset our 6.2 tonnes of carbon emissions for the reporting period, but overachieving with PIUs allows us to achieve a real-world carbon break even point as soon as possible.

This is demonstrated in the graph below:

This demonstrates our predicted carbon emissions over the next 30 years against the real-time carbon offsets through tree planting. We can forecast that from the start of our reporting period we will be carbon neutral by 2044.

Extrapolating this in both directions, which includes a lot of assumptions, we can approximate that gcp will be carbon neutral for all emissions since conception in 1987 by 2061.

Above: gcp tree planting 2024

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The Value of Competitions: Midland Road | Bristol

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Background

In July 2023, Brighter Places in partnership with the Bristol Housing Festival launched a design competition, for a new affordable development within Bristol City center.

Midland Road is a prominent local centre, adjacent to Old Market and previous home to a paintworks, since demolished. The brief was to provide a 100% affordable / social rented development of up to 70 units.

Having previously worked with Brighter Places, our aim was to create both a destination location within the wider local community, and a design that sensitively responds to its local context and needs.

Process

For this scheme an understanding of local and broader contexts was key. We began by reviewing the typology and scale of the surrounding environment, the sites’ access to green spaces and the overall local transport links.

From this we recognized that Midland Roads presents a unique focus point of transport links, creating an idealized meeting place for residents & passers alike, with opportunity for commercial / community led interventions.

Similarly, our initial studies identified a lack of local green space links (both public and private). These spaces are critical to community growth & function, as such the provision of accessible green space was critical to the design.

Understanding the immediate context was also key. Surrounding structures presented a high density of 5+ stories, with a mostly industrial context, infilled with more modern midrise housing developments.

Our initial Massing would follow the relatively limited footprint of the site, whilst cutting out key foot / cycle connections to permeate the structure and allowing for a central courtyard to create meeting and commercial opportunities.

Looking at the opportunities & constraints available to us, we quickly identified 3 key strategies to develop:

  1. Green Spaces for all: green spaces are often a luxury in urban centers. Our aim was to create a mixture of both public and private green spaces within the scheme, by using the roofs as interconnected terraces to create over 900sqm of space for residents & a ground floor courtyard for the public.

  2. Fostering Community: modern housing often lacks community, with disconnected structures and sterile circulation. Our aim was to create a winding path laced with social spaces throughout the structure that then further connected to proposed green spaces. The aim was to create an interconnected set of communal streets to enhance interaction.

  3. Activated Streets: The site is uniquely located at the intersection between transport links, from foot to local buses. This presents the opportunity to create a local hub, the proposal would need to be open in nature, with ground floor uses that would encourage residents and non-residents alike inside.

The Design

The final design appeals to the industrial character of the site, using an exposed frame with infill patterned brick panels. The mass is broken down by circulation cut through’s at ground level, and circulation at upper levels, conjunction with the perforated forms of the flats this gives the structure a high degree of permeability. The structure itself steps down with the context, beginning with 10 stories, gradually reducing to 6 stories.

Starting at the ground level is a mixture of public courtyards and commercial units, moving up the structure is a winding path of private roof gardens & circulation paths, each flat within the block has to move up or down a maximum of one storey to access a green space.

Each flat has its own balcony, and by mixing walk up and same storey accesses, there is only a singular circulation corridor per 2 levels of flats, maximizing social opportunities to shared areas.

 

The Submission

The final design was submitted in August. Unfortunately, gcp were not selected for the final shortlist this time. Designing a dense urban proposal in the center of Bristol was both invaluable and enjoyable; an experience that we can take with us into future projects.