Sacred Heart Residential
Located along the existing High Street, the Sacred Heart project creates a new church and residential quarter that acts as a fulcrum between the existing town and its proposed new town centre. The project replaces the outdated late 20th Century church building, nursery, public WCs and car park with a new church (designed by Lyall, Bills and Young), presbytery, parish office as well as around 88 apartments and retail space.
The site is a key connecting piece for the town, providing continuation of the existing High Street and knitting together the new and the old with shared spaces and new visual and pedestrian connections to the church and town park.
The centre piece is the new Sacred Heart Church to which the three individual residential buildings respond by forming a protective outer skin to the site, stepping down in height towards the church and the town park. This strategy establishes a strong frontage to the existing High Street whilst emphasising the quiet, oasis type quality of the church and town park setting.
The new High Street buildings establish a new relationship to the historic shop frontage, increasing the sense of arrival by creating a double-sided section of High Street. Beyond this the new buildings are set back from the main road, retaining the row of mature trees and providing a threshold public space to the proposed arrival square of the new town centre.
The buildings will be grounded in the local context but will each have a separate identity to create a more nuanced and layered environment, responding to their individual settings and functions. Design are robust and crafted, using architectural designs that will stand the test of time.