Good to go for Goods Station

Image: courtesy of LDA Design

Birmingham City Council has approved Vita Group’s Goods Station, a new development on a brownfield site close to the city’s New Street station.

A landscape-led masterplan for Goods Station will deliver 990 quality new homes, including 750 new student bedrooms and 220 serviced apartments. Plus, a large public food hall anchored around a generous, naturalistic garden – with public realm by LDA Design.

The design firm states:

'Goods Station creates a useful new pedestrian route between two key Birmingham streets, Navigation Street and Holliday Street, providing a gateway to the lively Westside neighbourhood.

'The site’s topography is challenging with a 4.5 metre level change. This has been addressed through a series of inviting terraces designed for socialising and play.'

LDA Design director, John Simpson, who is leading on the landscape masterplan said that Goods Station will be a fantastic new asset for the city, one that is softer, greener and leafier. He explains, “The design for Goods Station is markedly different to the hard landscaped spaces more common across the city. Half of the public realm will be given over to soft landscape with planting that changes with the seasons and has all-year-round interest.”

Design inspiration has also been found in the site’s industrial heritage with deconstructed rail infrastructure reimagined as integrated play with railway sleepers becoming balancing walks and gantry swing seats, and freight boxes used for climbing and seating.

Goods Station will be a space that works well from day through to evening, with the new food hall a magnet for the city’s growing number of foodies and space for community events.