Construction of the main phase of Brabazon Park is set to begin, marking a major milestone in transforming the former Filton Airfield into a new mixed-use neighbourhood for Bristol.
Designed by landscape architecture practice Grant Associates for YTL Developments – and built by YTL Construction UK – the six-hectare (15-acre) park will be the largest new urban public park created in the South West for more than 50 years. At nearly six hectares, Brabazon Park is similar in scale to, and slightly larger than, Bristol’s Castle Park.
The start of the main construction phase marks an important new chapter in Grant Associates’ long-term involvement at Brabazon. The practice has worked with YTL Developments since 2015, helping establish a landscape-led framework for regenerating the former airfield, with an interconnected network of parks, gardens, squares and streets shaping the character of the new neighbourhood.
Brabazon Park will form the green and social heart of this wider landscape. Extending approximately 450 metres from north to south, it will create a sequence of distinct landscapes and experiences, from a more wooded northern park with integrated play areas to an expansive central and southern waterside landscape.
A new lake will sit at the heart of the park, formed as a series of upper and lower water bodies connected by a weir and crossed by a new pedestrian and cycle bridge. Aquatic and marginal planting, along with a network of paths and waterside spaces, will frame the lake. A broad eastern promenade will provide a principal pedestrian route through the park, complemented by seating terraces overlooking the water, a slipway and boardwalk.
“Brabazon Park has been conceived from the outset as a piece of essential green and blue infrastructure for the new neighbourhood – socially as well as environmentally. It will be a shared landscape where people can safely meet, play, exercise and spend time in nature, but it is also working hard beneath the surface, managing water, supporting biodiversity and helping make Brabazon more resilient to a changing climate.”
Danny Nagle, Associate Director at Grant Associates,
Water will be integral to the park’s character and environmental performance. The lake forms part of Brabazon’s sustainable drainage strategy, receiving surface water from almost 20 hectares of surrounding development and providing 13,260m³ of stormwater attenuation. The system is designed to accommodate a 1-in-100-year rainfall event, with an additional 40% allowance for climate change. Together with extensive aquatic, marginal and wetland planting, this approach will help create a landscape better equipped to cope with increasingly extreme weather – from periods of intense rainfall to the hotter, drier conditions experienced across the UK this summer.
The northern part of the park will have a different, more naturalistic character, with paths winding through extensive tree planting and dedicated play areas set within the landscape. Across the park, spaces for play, informal recreation and gathering will sit alongside quieter places to walk, sit and experience nature.
Over 500 new trees will be planted across Brabazon Park. These will be combined with event lawns, wildflower edges, shrub, herbaceous and waterside planting to create a richly planted landscape with a variety of habitats and changing seasonal character.
The park has been conceived as much as social infrastructure as green and blue infrastructure. Positioned between new and existing communities, the new Bristol Brabazon railway station opening soon and the forthcoming Aviva Arena, it is intended to become a shared landscape for both the growing Brabazon community and people from across North Bristol and South Gloucestershire.
YTL Developments is developing Brabazon on the historic former Filton Airfield, birthplace of Concorde. Grant Associates’ wider landscape masterplan places green and public space at the heart of the emerging neighbourhood, connecting homes, workplaces and community facilities with major new transport and cultural destinations.
More than 86 acres of parks, playgrounds, landscaped gardens, sports fields and public squares are planned across the wider Brabazon development, with Brabazon Park forming its principal public landscape.
Image credit: Courtesy of Grant Associates
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