The Rectory Farm development for a visionary large public space in west London, UK, approved by the London Borough of Hounslow last year, has won the Mayor’s Award for Innovation In Planning at the London Planning Awards 2018.
The new park will sit above underground warehouse space to be created by the discreet extraction of minerals.
Rectory Farm’s large new public park will provide much-needed recreational space linking local communities and will include full size grass and all-weather football pitches; hockey and cricket pitches, plus a variety of other facilities alongside fields and tree-lined paths for walking, running and cycling.
Historically the 44.5hectares of green belt land was agricultural but has not been farmed since 1996.
Mineral extraction will take place beneath the park’s surface through an innovative top-down construction method, with the process contained below ground in contrast to open cast mining.
Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of London First, said: “As London continues to grow, we’ll need ingenuity and imagination to build the places people want to live and work in, and this year’s awards shows the wealth of talent we have working for our city.”
