We are place creatives, who believe that every neighbourhood deserves to be the subject of big thinking, but at a human scale. We live for great design that enhances the everyday experience and that is derived from the identity of each place.
Urban Place Lab work with placemaking clients, including landowners, investors,
developers, local authorities and communities, providing the following services.
Planning applications form the mainstay of UPL’s portfolio. We work for home builders, institutional clients and land-owners to coordinate and deliver the design aspects of planning applications ranging from 10-1,000+ homes all over the UK.
Design rationales are usually developed at the project vision stage, and we have experience of crafting these into a convincing set of design principles to the satisfaction of local authorities, statutory consultees and stakeholders.
Our Design and Access Statements typically become the go-to documentation for all application enquirers, helping to set the narrative for the place and are crafted in accessible language with bold and easy to understand graphics.
UPL is a collaborative practice. Whether working alongside other consultancies, reaching out to school children, or undertaking disability tours with the visually impaired, we endeavour to bring design activity to everyone.
Part of this is our commitment to delivering social value in our projects, and part of it is within our nature to wish to share and explore, discovering better ways of working and designing.
Our hands-on co-design exercises and interactive exhibitions have been identified as some of the most progressive (and fun) experiences by our clients and participants. Each project is a new challenge to us, and we are always delighted to exceed and stretch expectations in communities and the development industry.
Not all projects begin life as a planning application. We regularly engage with clients over the initial feasibility of design concepts for places, buildings or initiatives before further investment can be made.
We have extensive experience of generating ‘proof’ of concept and site capacity, combining sketch diagrams, 3D imagery and precedent research to capture imagination and build consensus around a design.
Many of these feasibility studies are used to submit funding bids to local authorities, non-governmental bodies (e.g. Arts Council England and former Local Enterprise Partnerships), or as part of site particulars, supporting on project marketing and helping attract inward investment for the site promoter.
For our longer-standing clients, we have developed the role of trusted design advisor, acting in a client-side capacity to provide inputs and comment on designs undertaken by others. This includes attending design workshops and review panels in a competitive context where parties are seeking appointment as development managers.
We help clients write and vet briefs and design submissions and assist with troubleshooting complex applications (particularly for tall buildings and mixed-use schemes) where in-house staff/officers lack expertise or capacity.
We work with our clients to identify and create opportunities, whether this be individual site appraisals, whole land portfolios, progressive solutions for new places and policy-changing concepts for the delivery of new communities, including regional strategies.
Our experience ranges from individual site promotions, to multiple sites under the same ownership, arriving at comprehensive place visions for strategic growth. Outputs include carefully considered vision documents and design solutions, building up a narrative for creating sustainable places and demonstrating an understanding of landscape and wider site character/context to arrive at credible designs and place concepts.
We regularly promote land for major home builders, strategic promoters, institutions and individual land-owners looking for a more thoughtful approach.
As towns and cities move beyond retail to seeking new experiences to offer, competition between places grows ever stronger. UPL is fortunate to have been involved in regeneration strategies that have set new standards in terms of place making and which have taken a whole-place view on how to deliver excitement while developing strategies that draw on local skills and place distinctiveness.
Working to assemble teams that combine design, movement, place-economics and public realm, we have both lead our own engagement and collaborated with grassroots and voluntary organisations to extract ‘place-DNA’ from towns requiring a more creative approach to regeneration.
Our approach to masterplanning and urban design is always accompanied by a landscape perspective. Successfully integrating designs into their landscape context defines the essence of good place-making and forms the back-bone of the UPL approach.
As a practice we have leading experience of developing wayfinding strategies, designing (and implementing) signage and ‘play on the way’ that re-engages residents with the places where they live. We create ideas that add layers of value to spaces, working closely with infrastructure and engineering colleagues, to embed these into realistic solutions.
UPL has supported some of the largest regeneration projects in the Southeast with design advice. We are authors of the Thamesmead Place Manual for Peabody, have advised Reading Borough on the disposal of the major civic centre site and continue to support the regeneration of Whitehill & Bordon in Hampshire through design coding and the recognised best practice toolkit of the Structuring Plan.
Working for public and private sector clients, we have authored design guidance promoting active travel, community growing landscapes, self and custom build as well as led innovation on parking and public realm as shared space, tall buildings and design distinctiveness in the public realm and built form.