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Watch our new film: RHS Bridgewater, home of hands-on horticulture.
In bloom: discover the hidden story of the award-winning Welcome Building.
When RHS Bridgewater’s Welcome Building won RIBA’s North West Building of the Year in 2022, Royal Institute of British Architects president Simon Allford commented on the positive impact that high-quality, sustainable architecture can have on the people who engage with it.
This notion, shared by many architects, engineers and designers, has gained attention in the press lately, and we’re so proud to have worked on a landmark project that exemplifies it.
The RHS hadn’t taken on a garden project of this size in more than 100 years until RHS Bridgewater – the fifth RHS garden in the UK, and the first to be built in an urban area.
For this once-in-a-generation project, working with architects Hodder and Partners, we created an engaging human-centric, planet-conscious ‘welcome building’ connecting the surrounding 154-acre gardens and beautifully bookending guests’ every visit.
Architectural features include a timber ceiling, sustainability-boosting wildflower roof, and supporting structural trees, as well as underfloor heating and cooling and services cleverly concealed within exposed wooden grooves and glazing, plus café, retail, kitchen and classroom spaces.
Bringing people together in person to utilise the senses to experience an abundance of wildlife, and celebrate and support our natural world, it emphasises exactly why horticulture matters so much.
Our thanks to Jones Millbank and RHS Bridgewater.