Take a walk with us through Camberley, a traditional English town located in the county of Surrey, southeast England. Large-scale improvements to Camberley High Street, Princess Way, and Knoll Walk have brought a safer, modern, attractive space to the town centre. The redesign has created a pleasant environment that is pedestrian-and cyclist-friendly, whilst accommodating the needs of parking, servicing, and safer driving conditions for vehicles.
„Camberley’s High Street transformation has set a new quality standard for the town’s public realm,“ comments Joao Toscano CMLI Director of Landscape & Urban Design at Project Centre. „Our design proposals were grounded in the latest best practice in streetscape design, and we used bespoke design to elevate a sense of place, identity and quality, whilst promoting pedestrian comfort and traffic calming principles,“ Stefano Scarano, Senior Landscape Architect adds.
Taking into account the invisible importance of street furniture when balancing an urban landscape, the studio worked closely with established international brand, mmcité. Together they furbished the streets of Camberley with refreshing and modern street furniture.
The mmcité portfolio is based on products which are universal, fitting in almost anywhere. They are attentively designed down to the finest detail, and even when they’re not seeking attention they have a huge effect on people’s lives in the city. „This is proof of our aim to approach public spaces with respect to their context,“ said mmcité chief designer, David Karasek. „We are setting the bar for outdoor design as if it were conventional furniture. Furniture that must meet standards a thousand times more exacting than anything we have at home, thanks to the host of limitations on materials and technologies, as well as ensuring resistance against bad weather and vandalism,“ he concluded.
The flexibility that the spatial design creates, the bespoke detailing of key design features (e. g. the seating planters across Princess Way and Knoll Walk, the green wall in Knoll Walk or the new High Street gate), the careful choice of paving materials and sensitive planting design – all of this illustrates a high level of placemaking ambition and innovation which prepares Camberley town centre for its future.
