The University of Bristol’s Sloane Robinson Building at the new Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus has recently opened, aligning with the new station entrance at Bristol Temple Meads. This development signifies a significant step in the ongoing regeneration of Bristol Temple Quarter, one of the UK’s largest regeneration initiatives.
The campus strengthens the University’s civic presence, creating a new hub for research, education, enterprise and collaboration at the heart of the city.
The Sloane Robinson Building – the flagship building at the new campus – was designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, with landscape architecture and public realm by Grant Associates. The campus brings together new university buildings with a sequence of green public spaces for students, staff, businesses and the wider community.
Grant Associates’ strategy establishes landscape as the campus’s connective fabric, linking it to Bristol Temple Meads railway station, the riverside, the floating harbour walkway, and Totterdown Basin. From the outset, the ambition was to create a ‘green civic campus’, combining biodiversity and environmental performance with an inclusive public realm that supports university and city life.
A landscape for university and city life
At the heart of the landscape is University Square, a major new public space and focal point at the campus entrance. From here, tree-grove arrival spaces, planted terraces, and social areas extend towards the riverside and floating harbour walkway, creating places to meet, study, eat, and spend time outdoors.
The landscape was designed to accommodate everything from everyday pedestrian and cycle movement to informal learning, socialising and events, with integrated seating and planting helping create smaller, more intimate spaces within the wider campus.
Greening Temple Quarter
The planting strategy draws on the site’s distinctive waterside setting and natural assets, particularly the River Avon and Totterdown Basin. Planting transitions from naturalistic, biodiverse habitats along the water’s edge to more cultivated civic campus spaces, bringing a sense of ‘wildness’ into this formerly industrial part of Bristol.
A total of 126 new trees, representing 37 species, cultivars and hybrids, have been planted across the campus to provide seasonal interest, support biodiversity, create shade and strengthen climate resilience. Grant Associates worked closely with the University’s horticultural team from early design through to completion to develop the tree strategy and species selection, with regular reviews throughout the project.
“The Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus gave us the opportunity to rethink what the landscape of a city-centre university could be. We wanted the campus to feel rooted in Bristol — open, green and reconnecting nature with the city…”
Chin Chen, Associate Director at Grant Associates
From the outset, the team shared an ambition to establish a strong green identity. The team therefore selected larger, mature trees for the main civic spaces, matching the scale of the buildings and providing immediate presence and shade. This is particularly evident at University Square, where a grove of mature trees creates a strong sense of arrival from the new Temple Meads station entrance. Towards the river, a more naturalistic mix of tree sizes and species, developed with the project ecologist, strengthens habitat value and the waterside character.
More than 3,500 sq m of species-rich planting — including rain gardens, pollinator-rich planting, biodiverse roofs, native meadow, and aquatic planting — creates diverse, resilient green and blue infrastructure.
Landscape also extends into and onto the architecture. A striking five-storey-high vertical planted landscape within the Level 1 courtyard garden and three four-storey-high vertical planted internal gardens on Level 2 bring greenery and daylight into the heart of the building, blurring the distinction between interior and exterior spaces while creating a strong green presence visible from the adjacent Temple Meads platforms and the harbour.
Externally, rain gardens integrated throughout the public realm form part of the campus’s sustainable drainage strategy. Designed to capture and temporarily hold surface water during heavy rainfall, they use specially selected planting and growing media able to cope with changing water conditions. This allows the rain gardens to function as both drainage infrastructure and planted landscape, making water management visible across campus while contributing to a more resilient public realm.
Along the upper Harbourside, trees and layered planting create a greener edge overlooking the river, with seating and picnic areas providing places to pause and enjoy the waterfront.
Accessibility and movement are integral to the landscape, with routes designed to negotiate the site’s significant level changes required for flood resilience while connecting the campus with Bristol Temple Meads and the surrounding city.
The completed landscape is intended not simply as the setting for the University’s new building, but as a significant piece of public realm in its own right – opening the campus to the city and contributing to the wider transformation of Bristol Temple Quarter as a more connected, welcoming and green part of the city.
Sloane Robinson Building – Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus – University of Bristol
Client: University of Bristol
Architect: FCBS
Landscape architect: Grant Associates
Engineers: Buro Happold
Project Managers: AECOM
Vertical Planting specialist: Green Fortune
Tree Nursery: Hilliers
Main Contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine
Photography: Andy Stagg
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