The Bond

Client: Oval

with BPN Architects

[2021-22]

“Enhance and ensure the effective long term maintenance of the city’s natural green and water spaces, which are so essential for an adapted and healthy city.” -Birmingham Green Living Spaces Plan

Following Principle 4 that I proposed in Digbeth Masterplan, work at the Bond prioritised expanding experiences of the canal and its aquatic wildlife, with many previous site visits proving that the canal has much more to offer than is currently perceived. I also wanted to recreate the idea of ‘a hole’ like Vaughton’s hole, a lost activity and beauty spot along the local River Rea.

Borrowing the urban scenery; recalibrating the current site and reinterpreting site history became part and parcel of my approach. The aim was to create an outdoor gathering and breathing space for new office and studio residents, particularly as the project began during Covid lockdowns. Rather than act as a divide, the new floating bridge proposal aimed to make the best of both the canal basin and wider canal for future experience and activity, given the infrequency of narrowboats entering the site.

Past usages of the boat yard, Ice House and adjacent wire works were referenced at concept stage through materiality and bespoke seating features. Poetic ideas of suspension, floating or cracking, derived from cracked pavers, ice forms and the presence of cranes at the site formed spatial design principles. Fruiting trees were also proposed as forageable edible planting. Factors such as the lifting of lockdowns, site occupancy and budget, meant that the project had to morph into more of an events space past the concept stage. However the canal basin intervention and planting remained. This has proven to have created a safe haven for wildlife with new occupants remarking on visible shoals of fish entering the basin daily - which was exactly the desired result.