A Landscape-led Community
Reimagining redundant rural land as a landscape-led community where care, nature and everyday life become inseparable.
Type Landscape-led Masterplan
Client Superior Healthcare Group
Location Preston, Kent
Size Three Hectares
Status Concept Design, Feasibility & Masterplan
Every place carries the potential for a different future.
Once defined by cultivation and commerce, the former Preston Garden Centre presented an opportunity to rethink how an existing rural site could serve both its local community and a growing societal need. Rather than replacing one commercial use with another, our vision transforms the site into a landscape-led community that places wellbeing, dignity and belonging at the heart of everyday life.
The project establishes a long-term masterplan that carefully balances healthcare, landscape, ecology, adaptive reuse and community within a single strategic vision. Rather than creating a conventional care facility, the masterplan is conceived as a small village. Existing buildings are imaginatively reworked and adapted where appropriate, while new homes are arranged as a series of modest clusters centred around gardens, orchards and shared communal spaces.
Drawing inspiration from the surrounding rural vernacular, the architecture adopts familiar forms, natural materials and human-scaled proportions that respond sensitively to Preston’s landscape, heritage and village character.
‘What if designing for specialist care didn’t feel institutional, but part of everyday life, shaped by landscape, community and a sense of belonging.’
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Landscape is treated as the organising framework for the entire development. Accessible pathways, productive planting, biodiversity enhancement and therapeutic gardens are woven throughout the masterplan, creating places that encourage movement, independence and everyday social interaction. Rather than separating buildings from nature, the proposals recognise landscape as an essential component of wellbeing and community life. Buildings are designed to sit lightly on the land, where paths meander rather than divide, and where care is woven into the rhythms of everyday life.
‘Gardens, orchards and shared landscapes are not amenities added afterwards, but the framework through which community, wellbeing and everyday life are experienced.’
From the earliest feasibility work through to the emerging masterplan, the project demonstrates how strategic design thinking can unlock new opportunities for redundant commercial sites through adaptive reuse, rural placemaking and landscape-led regeneration. More than a healthcare development, it establishes a vision for creating resilient communities where thoughtful regeneration creates places that support both people and the wider communities they become part of.
We believe the future of rural care lies in places that are more human, more connected and more imaginative, where wellbeing is shaped as much by landscape, community and familiarity as it is by buildings alone.
‘The most successful places for care feel like neighbourhoods first and healthcare environments second.’
Project Team
Christopher Taylor, Joe Manuel,
Charlie Hope, Charlie Whittington
