The Newhall project is an award winning new neighbourhood in Harlow, Essex. The masterplan was produced by studio | REAL to integrate into the overall structure of the New Town, originally laid out by Sir Frederick Gibberd, but with a much more permeable and legible layout. Also, unlike the New Town, Newhall makes use of design codes as a mechanism to coordinate different developers and maintain design quality.
The schedule of design codes covers a wide range of topics but the heart of the code is the regulating plan, which is used to coordinate both built form and the public realm. The primary codes include street sections, building lines, building heights and marker buildings. Key principles for highway design were negotiated with the Highway Authority at an early stage to inform the code.
With phase two about to commence on site, many lessons have been learned over the course of the development thus far and improvements have been incorporated into the code. However, despite regular review, their content remains fundamentally unchanged.
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