Creating your ideal place

Ebbsfleet Garden City comes to life with public engagement in action...

The largest of ten Healthy New Town pilots, Ebbsfleet Garden City pledged to create ‘radical but realisable’ proposals through its Landscape Design Ideas Competition, run by the Landscape Institute in 2018.

The display was based on the winning ‘HALO’ entry for the Landscapes for Healthy Living competition, led by Bradley Murphy Design (Landscape, Summer 2018) and the highly commended design by Churchman Landscape Architects for its New Landscape Guides to Ebbsfleet project.

As a result, Ebbsfleet Development Corporation (EDC) commissioned Micheline Mannion Studio to create a public information and engagement display in Bluewater Shopping Centre. Shoppers were asked ‘what is your ideal place?’ and given an invitation to ‘create your ideal place’.

Overview of the display showing the drum interior with the HALO panoramic visual.

© Peter Durant

The stand’s exterior invited the public to create their ideal place by considering what their natural environment should contain: a place to connect? Explore? Discover? Play?

Exercise? Socialise? Create? Relax? Learn? or Grow Food? The interior contained detailed information on the Ebbsfleet Garden City project and other competition shortlist entries, via the lightbox and iTable.

The display’s drum interior included an 8 metre panoramic of HALO’s proposals, alongside an ideas wall. Prompts and postcards, based on the nine themes, were included for feedback, with an iPad digital survey, creating an environment for visitors to reflect, express and create their sense of an ideal place.

The stand was on display from January 9 to February 5, 2019.