St Austell Rooftop Garden

The St Austell Rooftop Garden is a new 2,000m2 public park and town square, over a disused rooftop carpark. The landscaped grounds are accompanied by new spaces for the local community, including a public café, an events and exhibition space, public facilities and studio units for creative businesses.

The designs are the first stage in the delivery of St Austell Town Council’s Revitalisation Masterplan. Funded by a Good Growth Shared Prosperity Fund, a team led by Hayhurst & Co. were appointed by the town council to develop the project and to lead the design of the new public space and community facilities.

The project team engaged with local community groups to develop the brief for the new public spaces, and test how the designs will deliver the Revitalisation Masterplan’s aims to support economic, environmental, and social wellbeing. The project also sought to create cultural and environmental benefits for the town including improving the health and wellbeing and helping to foster a cohesive community, through civic engagement and participation.

Consultees for the project included local groups and organisations as well as service providers from the charity, healthcare, education, culture and leisure sectors operating within the town. We worked collaboratively with the town council to identify targeted social value outcomes to support wellbeing and healthy lifestyles, through supported activities such as markets and events, and by facilitating biodiversity, growing and social prescribing.

The design approach to the landscape comprises lightweight boardwalks and raised walkways that guide routes through the new park. Widenings in the path form passing places and edges fold up to form seating and benches, provide stop off points for small groups to enjoy the landscape and offer space for social interaction and activity.

The landscape proposes lightweight, regional and drought tolerant planting, with native species, grasses and lightweight flowering plants suitable for a shallow substrate as well as a mix of resistant larger species. Landscaping at ground level takes advantage of higher loading capacities, exploring use of clay substrates to support regional species and the potential for recycling local claypit waste.

Within the new park, light-weight timber pavilions house a café, events and exhibition space and creative studios. Designed to support and facilitate urban regeneration, they will facilitate a variety of events and seasonal civic activities. Their roof tiles, inspired by the local clay industry, create a variegated green backdrop that blends with the new planted landscape and reinforces the introduction of a new green heart to the town.

The form of the roofs responds to the site’s roofscape context and reference the roof pitches of the historic town centre. The pavilion structures offer a prominent identity that responds to town’s sensitive sight-lines, providing a visual link to ground level and also enhances the setting of the St Austell Conservation Area and long views to the adjacent listed buildings.