Filwood Green Business Park

A pioneering eco-friendly office and workshop space.

Location
Bristol
Client
HCA
Bristol City Council
Value
£11.6m
Completion
2015
Size
40,000sqft
BREEAM Rating
'Outstanding'

Filwood Green Business Park was designed as the landmark building to celebrate Bristol’s year as Green Capital of Europe in 2015.

Whether or not that year was a success for the city causes much debate, however, it did spark the investment needed for greener buildings.

In particular, one designed to regenerate a whole area and help smaller businesses come to life.

Background

We designed Filwood Green Business Park with input from the local Knowle West community and Bristol City Council.

It provides a mixture of offices and workshops, with a central hub for people to meet, eat, work and chill.

The idea was to create a range of spaces that would suit small, creative businesses, while giving them space to grow. There are no long term contracts to tie them down and Filwood’s managers host regular events to help the business owners get to know each other (but, more on that later).

 

Designing the Spaces

When designing the internal spaces we had in mind workshops, artist studios and small shops. All of the units are neutral, stripped down and easily customised; suitable for different businesses as they grow.

A key part of the brief was to facilitate chance encounters between the users. To achieve that we created some unusual design features: kitchens and toilets are outside of the units, and, with the external staircase off the central courtyard, people have to move around the site and end up bumping into one other.

Read about Filwood Green Business Park’s impact on the small businesses in Inhabitant at the bottom of the page.

Sustainability

During the European funding process, the business park was required to meet a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating of over 70%. It achieved 93%.

This put it well into the ‘Outstanding’ category, saving an estimated 46 tonnes of carbon annually (or, using the classic double decker bus measuring stick: 276).

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'Oustanding' BREEAM Rating

It has a green roof, was built using high performance materials and only lets businesses with green credentials rent the spaces.

Furniture was even produced by Bristol Maker Lab, a community scheme set up by Knowle West Media Centre that you can meet below in Inhabitant magazine.