AT HOME
W
hat’s the back-
ground of the
project?
What we had at
Gourock was a town
that was nestled in
a coastline, it’s on the firth of Clyde, and
it is to a certain extent disconnected from
its waterfront. The main road that runs
through Gourock runs through quite a nice
street, but behind the street there’s what
we call backland - the rear of business
units. In the same spot there was a car park
that was built in the 1970s, there was a
disconnected section where there was no
real link, it was just a very rough and ready
beach area. Finally, there was the railway
station which has just been refurbed, but
which sits on an open space on its own
completely disconnected from the town
Part of the project was to look at how we
could reconnect all of this. There had been
some existing master planning work done,
but only to an outline level, so we came on
the back of that and started looking at first
principles, and what would be possible
within the budget figures that were being
spoken about.
Part of the project was complicated
because there were lots of different land
ownerships over the site. We wanted to try
and make the site more of a frontage and
create a footfall zone - as you can imagine
the car park was higgledy piggledy, it was
sort of arranged but people were just park-
ing everywhere and it was a bit chaotic.
Our aim was to bring some structure and
order, making it more pedestrian-friendly
and provide some sort of basis for people
to want to invest in their shops and units.
The whole site is about three hectares,
but the project morphed into a bit of land
reclamation, forcing a connection along
the waterfront or along the backs of these
houses and onto the pier heads. In the
end we actually created a continuous
waterfront, and I think when the council
saw our initial designs taking shape they
saw the possibility of the scheme being
more comprehensive in terms of traffic
GOUROCK
management. It’s a classic small town
traffic situation where traffic is a problem,
so they thought actually with a bit more
investment and a bit more thinking we
could improve the traffic problem, and
actually start looking at fundamentally
maybe increasing car park capacity which
was also a problem. So there’s the very
rough background!
How much autonomy did they give
you, creatively, to make your mark on
the project?
When we started we had a clear budget, so
one of the first things we had to do was test
that. We need to start putting some layouts
and ideas down and test what’s doable
for the money. We knew that we wanted
to do a land reclamation and create the
waterfront link. It was all pretty shabby at
the back, so within reason and the confines
of the budget, it was really down to us to
look at it creatively and say how could we
do this, what are the options, what could
you get for the money.
August 2017 | Landscape Insight
27