While some of 2023 was consumed by the slow-moving gears of the planning system, much progress was made reworking the Phoenix masterplan, taking our vision to a national audience, launching our Foundation, kickstarting a cultural programme, identifying potential new sites and partnerships and growing the Human Nature brand. Here’s what happened month by month.
We began the year in a hurry putting the final touches on the Phoenix planning application, including a nearly 400-page Design & Access Statement. Usually a fairly short summary of the processes that have led to the proposals and its design, we saw the DAS as an opportunity to explore the Phoenix site in detail - its industrial past, relationship with the South Downs and the numerous constraints, challenges and ambitions that shaped the masterplan – while making the case for a new model of sustainable, people-focused placemaking.
We celebrated the submission at an event at the Lewes Depot, attended by local supporters, community leaders and politicians, as well as architects and engineers from our wider design team. News of the Phoenix application appeared in The Times, where it was described as a “trailblazing model for how the UK might meet its net-zero goal”.
The remainder of the Phoenix application was submitted to the South Downs National Park, including technical documents such as an Environmental Statement, Design Code (which binds future architecture to a set of rules) and a detailed application for ‘Parcel 1’ designed by Ash Sakula Architects. News reports appeared on ITV Meridian and BBC South East, as well in magazines such as the Architects Journal (under a rather nice headline: ‘Who’s who of architects reveal plans for 700-home timber scheme in Lewes’).
After a period of dotting i’s and crossing t’s, the Park validated the planning application, opening up consultation inviting members of the public, local groups and public bodies to comment on the plans. The Phoenix won an Architectural Review Future Project Award for Regeneration and Masterplanning, with judges calling it a “radical response in the context of conservative British planning, promoting positive urban values to … extend British towns.” An interview with our Founder & CEO Jonathan Smales made the cover of Building Magazine, which included comment from Nicholas Boys Smith, chair of the Government’s Office for Place, who said: “It’s great to see a smaller, locally rooted developer and it’s marvellous that they are trying to create a proper walkable, gentle-density neighbourhood.”
The Human Nature Places charitable Foundation was registered on 9 March, with Michael Manolson appointed as chair and Joanna Yarrow, Andrew Walker, Alessandra Gutman and Oliver Dudok van Heel as trustees.
We hosted meetings and exhibition open days at Phoenix House, as the consultation period was extended by the Park for a further month, while we also began gearing up for our ‘meanwhile’ events programme. During this period our planning and engagement team tracked the consultation submissions, helping us identify reasons for support and opposition. We later published these findings, which showed that 67.5% of people who commented with a Lewes address supported the Phoenix. At this time, we became aware of concern around our application to remove trees along the Causeway edge, issuing a press statement to explain our position and committing to work with local groups to green the Phoenix and protect as many healthy trees as possible.
We worked with Diversity Lewes to host Africa Day & The International Soup Festival in our fast-evolving Sheds events space on Phoenix Place, where more than 350 people joined us to try food from across the world, listen to music and participate in dance workshops. In a local Facebook group we responded to a petition around the removal of Causeway trees and criticisms regarding the Phoenix site’s parameters, particularly where plans were drawn too close to the Pells Pool. We committed to working closely with the Pool’s community association to ensure no unacceptable impact on the pool and its users, with the design team tasked to reopen plans.
The Phoenix won the award for Future Place 2023 at The Pineapples, which recognises “projects that make a positive social, environmental and economic impact".
More than 60 people came to hear us speak about sustainable placemaking (and enjoy some hoppy IPAs) at Beak Brewery. In the Sheds, Frolic hosted one of their famous parties, raising money for the Lewes Emergency Food Network; 60 Lewes Year 9 school children who missed Patina three years earlier because of lockdown finally joined workshops, celebrated and finished ‘big makes’; while 50 suited and booted teenagers from Northease Manor danced the evening away at their prom.
The Park issued its formal response to the Phoenix planning application, addressing matters raised by statutory consultees and community groups, alongside its own questions and comments. We were heartened to read that the Park was “broadly supportive of the concept and bold initiative being explored”, while work began in earnest on masterplan amendments.
Our Head of Sustainable Construction Andy Tugby and Engagement Assistant Eve Crashaw, joined the Priory Careers Cafe, speaking to Year 9s about Human Nature’s work and setting a task to construct bridges using discarded materials from Phoenix House (hopefully inspiring a few future structural engineers and reuse specialists). The Teachers’ Environmental Unit of sustainability managers from local schools met at Phoenix House, while a delegation from Korea were given a site tour, thanks to a connection with the Lewes Climate Hub.
After a busy summer, the design, planning and sustainable construction teams resubmitted plans for the Phoenix with a number of changes, including relocation of the Health Centre to the Causeway, improvements and height reductions around Pells Pool, a new public space on the Green Wall and Causeway and commitment to a new feasibility study of trees along this edge at the detailed design stage.
In the Sheds, local charities Culture Shift and UCanSpray were joined by the likes of Glyndebourne and Starfish to host Every Sort of People Can, an inclusive free arts and music event for young people, . Our Chief Impact Officer Joanna Yarrow joined BBC Woman’s Hour to talk about combating loneliness through the design of places at the Phoenix and beyond.
With changes submitted to the Park, consultation reopened. In The Sheds, Hilltop Sessions hosted their inaugural festival, where 350 people came to see 18 artists and DJs over two stages on a sweltering day, and our friends at OneZero hosted a launch party for their new community energy retrofit company.
Consultation once again came to a close. A letter arrived from the Park recommending deferral at the planning committee while key issues were resolved. This prompted an open letter to the planning committee members, making the case that after many wasted years it was time to finally redevelop this precious brownfield site. Many people in Lewes agreed, with around 100 people joining a demonstration outside County Hall to express their support for the Phoenix proposal at the planning committee. As expected, members voted for deferral.
Mae Architects, designers of four buildings on the Phoenix, won the Stirling Prize (UK’s architecture’s highest accolade) for the gentle and elegant John Morden Centre. In the Sheds, DJBrowneyedGirl and DJ Cookie took to the decks for our first before-midnight Shed Party; and 450 people joined our day-long Over & Under festival, with weavers and basket makers from across Sussex, demonstrations, live folk music, local food and drink and a rip-roaring Ceilidh by Sussex band Folkadelix.
After meeting with the Park in Midhurst to clarify comments by members and planning officers, the team set to work on the latest round of changes to the masterplan, with a pre-Christmas deadline set for the latest submission. We joined forces with Diversity Lewes again (as well as the Manna Education And Development Foundation) for Sokoni, a night market at The Sheds, with 32 local micro and small businesses, DJs, Caribbean food, a bar from Beak Brewery, and 500 attendees.
We submitted plans for the Phoenix, with new work on the Design Code, new clarifications and commitments on our ecology strategy, ‘kinetic’ views (experienced while moving through the site), and further evidence provided on flood risk, air quality and transport. A new date for the planning committee was set for February 2024.
Thank you to all the wonderful individuals and organisations who have helped to make this busy year such a successful chapter in our journey to inspire and enable a more sustainable way of life at the Phoenix and beyond. We look forward to achieving more positive impacts together in 2024.
While some of 2023 was consumed by the slow-moving gears of the planning system, much progress was made reworking the Phoenix masterplan, taking our vision to a national audience, launching our Foundation, kickstarting a cultural programme, identifying potential new sites and partnerships and growing the Human Nature brand. Here’s what happened month by month.
We began the year in a hurry putting the final touches on the Phoenix planning application, including a nearly 400-page Design & Access Statement. Usually a fairly short summary of the processes that have led to the proposals and its design, we saw the DAS as an opportunity to explore the Phoenix site in detail - its industrial past, relationship with the South Downs and the numerous constraints, challenges and ambitions that shaped the masterplan – while making the case for a new model of sustainable, people-focused placemaking.
We celebrated the submission at an event at the Lewes Depot, attended by local supporters, community leaders and politicians, as well as architects and engineers from our wider design team. News of the Phoenix application appeared in The Times, where it was described as a “trailblazing model for how the UK might meet its net-zero goal”.
The remainder of the Phoenix application was submitted to the South Downs National Park, including technical documents such as an Environmental Statement, Design Code (which binds future architecture to a set of rules) and a detailed application for ‘Parcel 1’ designed by Ash Sakula Architects. News reports appeared on ITV Meridian and BBC South East, as well in magazines such as the Architects Journal (under a rather nice headline: ‘Who’s who of architects reveal plans for 700-home timber scheme in Lewes’).
After a period of dotting i’s and crossing t’s, the Park validated the planning application, opening up consultation inviting members of the public, local groups and public bodies to comment on the plans. The Phoenix won an Architectural Review Future Project Award for Regeneration and Masterplanning, with judges calling it a “radical response in the context of conservative British planning, promoting positive urban values to … extend British towns.” An interview with our Founder & CEO Jonathan Smales made the cover of Building Magazine, which included comment from Nicholas Boys Smith, chair of the Government’s Office for Place, who said: “It’s great to see a smaller, locally rooted developer and it’s marvellous that they are trying to create a proper walkable, gentle-density neighbourhood.”
The Human Nature Places charitable Foundation was registered on 9 March, with Michael Manolson appointed as chair and Joanna Yarrow, Andrew Walker, Alessandra Gutman and Oliver Dudok van Heel as trustees.
We hosted meetings and exhibition open days at Phoenix House, as the consultation period was extended by the Park for a further month, while we also began gearing up for our ‘meanwhile’ events programme. During this period our planning and engagement team tracked the consultation submissions, helping us identify reasons for support and opposition. We later published these findings, which showed that 67.5% of people who commented with a Lewes address supported the Phoenix. At this time, we became aware of concern around our application to remove trees along the Causeway edge, issuing a press statement to explain our position and committing to work with local groups to green the Phoenix and protect as many healthy trees as possible.
We worked with Diversity Lewes to host Africa Day & The International Soup Festival in our fast-evolving Sheds events space on Phoenix Place, where more than 350 people joined us to try food from across the world, listen to music and participate in dance workshops. In a local Facebook group we responded to a petition around the removal of Causeway trees and criticisms regarding the Phoenix site’s parameters, particularly where plans were drawn too close to the Pells Pool. We committed to working closely with the Pool’s community association to ensure no unacceptable impact on the pool and its users, with the design team tasked to reopen plans.
The Phoenix won the award for Future Place 2023 at The Pineapples, which recognises “projects that make a positive social, environmental and economic impact".
More than 60 people came to hear us speak about sustainable placemaking (and enjoy some hoppy IPAs) at Beak Brewery. In the Sheds, Frolic hosted one of their famous parties, raising money for the Lewes Emergency Food Network; 60 Lewes Year 9 school children who missed Patina three years earlier because of lockdown finally joined workshops, celebrated and finished ‘big makes’; while 50 suited and booted teenagers from Northease Manor danced the evening away at their prom.
The Park issued its formal response to the Phoenix planning application, addressing matters raised by statutory consultees and community groups, alongside its own questions and comments. We were heartened to read that the Park was “broadly supportive of the concept and bold initiative being explored”, while work began in earnest on masterplan amendments.
Our Head of Sustainable Construction Andy Tugby and Engagement Assistant Eve Crashaw, joined the Priory Careers Cafe, speaking to Year 9s about Human Nature’s work and setting a task to construct bridges using discarded materials from Phoenix House (hopefully inspiring a few future structural engineers and reuse specialists). The Teachers’ Environmental Unit of sustainability managers from local schools met at Phoenix House, while a delegation from Korea were given a site tour, thanks to a connection with the Lewes Climate Hub.
After a busy summer, the design, planning and sustainable construction teams resubmitted plans for the Phoenix with a number of changes, including relocation of the Health Centre to the Causeway, improvements and height reductions around Pells Pool, a new public space on the Green Wall and Causeway and commitment to a new feasibility study of trees along this edge at the detailed design stage.
In the Sheds, local charities Culture Shift and UCanSpray were joined by the likes of Glyndebourne and Starfish to host Every Sort of People Can, an inclusive free arts and music event for young people, . Our Chief Impact Officer Joanna Yarrow joined BBC Woman’s Hour to talk about combating loneliness through the design of places at the Phoenix and beyond.
With changes submitted to the Park, consultation reopened. In The Sheds, Hilltop Sessions hosted their inaugural festival, where 350 people came to see 18 artists and DJs over two stages on a sweltering day, and our friends at OneZero hosted a launch party for their new community energy retrofit company.
Consultation once again came to a close. A letter arrived from the Park recommending deferral at the planning committee while key issues were resolved. This prompted an open letter to the planning committee members, making the case that after many wasted years it was time to finally redevelop this precious brownfield site. Many people in Lewes agreed, with around 100 people joining a demonstration outside County Hall to express their support for the Phoenix proposal at the planning committee. As expected, members voted for deferral.
Mae Architects, designers of four buildings on the Phoenix, won the Stirling Prize (UK’s architecture’s highest accolade) for the gentle and elegant John Morden Centre. In the Sheds, DJBrowneyedGirl and DJ Cookie took to the decks for our first before-midnight Shed Party; and 450 people joined our day-long Over & Under festival, with weavers and basket makers from across Sussex, demonstrations, live folk music, local food and drink and a rip-roaring Ceilidh by Sussex band Folkadelix.
After meeting with the Park in Midhurst to clarify comments by members and planning officers, the team set to work on the latest round of changes to the masterplan, with a pre-Christmas deadline set for the latest submission. We joined forces with Diversity Lewes again (as well as the Manna Education And Development Foundation) for Sokoni, a night market at The Sheds, with 32 local micro and small businesses, DJs, Caribbean food, a bar from Beak Brewery, and 500 attendees.
We submitted plans for the Phoenix, with new work on the Design Code, new clarifications and commitments on our ecology strategy, ‘kinetic’ views (experienced while moving through the site), and further evidence provided on flood risk, air quality and transport. A new date for the planning committee was set for February 2024.
Thank you to all the wonderful individuals and organisations who have helped to make this busy year such a successful chapter in our journey to inspire and enable a more sustainable way of life at the Phoenix and beyond. We look forward to achieving more positive impacts together in 2024.