C A S E S T U DY
1. The landscape vision and dual-use approach for the Sidmouth amphitheatre scheme integrates vital stormwater management with a local amenity that benefits the community and biodiversity all year round.
Sidmouth amphitheatre Jacobs-designed flood alleviation scheme which doubles up as an amphitheatre for the local community. Paul Hargreaves and Andy Craven Webb The Sidmouth flood alleviation scheme has seen the installation of a new drainage system to divert surface water away from properties. The water is guided via a swale to a flood storage area, which doubles up as an amphitheatre. The design enhances the local landscape and biodiversity – functioning as an outdoor performance venue and recreation space that can be enjoyed by the community, while ensuring it will remain unflooded in most rainfall events. For many years, Sidmouth, a town on the south coast of England, has suffered regular stormwater flooding, with overland flowpaths
draining to a low point directly in the town centre, putting up to around 150 residential properties and businesses at risk. If a rare, major storm were to take place, many local residential and commercial properties would be at risk of flooding. Working with Devon County Council, Jacobs developed a flood management scheme that would overcome this and navigate the town’s drainage challenges – including a dense town centre, narrow streets and historic buildings with shallow foundations. Our team went further and were inspired to turn the flood defences into an amphitheatre, providing a public space for local communities to visit and use. We also reinstated a wildflower meadow and planted 11 new trees. Now over 300 people at any one time can enjoy local events in a unique natural setting, so long as the weather stays dry.
The project needed to consider how to intercept surface water flows on a busy highway and provide a flood storage solution to mitigate flood flows, while reducing flows into the town centre. More traditional approaches to mitigate flood risk were not viable with the town’s narrow streets and historic buildings, so the storage scheme needed to be located further upstream in an area of open parkland, which was acceptable to the local community and sensitive to the impact on the mature trees. Favouring Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), we focused on creating an environmentally friendly solution using Innovyze drainage design software, diversifying the flora and supporting the needs of nature, while creating a useful asset for the community. We developed a landscape vision for the storage area, with an amphitheatre as the focal point of the scheme,
1.
29
