The Phoenix, Lewes (Credit: Human Nature with Periscope)

The Phoenix is a sustainable neighbourhood on a former industrial site in Lewes, a historic town within the South Downs National Park

Read the Design & Access Statement for the Phoenix

See our plans for a new sustainable neighbourhood in Lewes

Read the Design & Access Statement for the Phoenix

See our plans for a new sustainable neighbourhood in Lewes

Location

Lewes, UK

Status

Pre-application

Size

7.9 hectares

Masterplanning, planning and urban design

Periscope, Human Nature, Kathryn Firth (Arup), Whaleback

This new neighbourhood turns the imperatives of the climate and natural emergencies into opportunities for better design, better placemaking and ultimately healthier and better living. Planned to prioritise people over cars, powered by renewable energy and designed to encourage a culture of sharing, it represents a new and regenerative way to make a place, build a community and create a more productive local economy fit for the 21st century.

Constructed primarily in sustainable timber, some of which will come from Sussex woodlands and led, funded and built by local people, the Phoenix is naturally and necessarily of its place. It seeks to capture the radical spirit of Lewes and enhance its extraordinary landscape. These plans and the wider development process associated with them, creates multiple opportunities to bind with more disadvantaged communities, chart pathways out of disadvantage for young people and house a wide community of families well, while improving the quality of life for all who live, work and play here.

Human Nature has assembled a world class team, left, to undertake this ambitious project.

1. Pells Gardens Courtyard

Housing

2. Spring Lane Courtyard & Mews

Housing

3. Rowe Lane Courtyard & Mews

Housing

4. Pells Lane Courtyard & Mews

Housing

5. Brook Street Co-Housing

Housing

6. Green grocers

Retail

7. The Foundry Apartments

Housing, retail, workspace

8. The Health Hub

Foundry Primary Care Practice, North Street Dental Practice, complementary health services, pharmacy

9. Phoenix House

Offices, training, learning

10. Spring Gardens Apartments

Housing

11. Phoenix Square Live/Work & Creative Studios

Housing and creative space

12. Soap yard

13. Soap Factory

Bouldering, climbing, skateboarding, dance, Starfish Studios, arts space, juice bar, energy centre

14. Phoenix Neighbourhood Management

Estate management, repair café, library of things, zero-waste store

15. Full Cycle & Apartments

Retail, housing

16. Phoenix Cycle Lane

17. Mobility Hub & Services

EV car share, car hire and car club; EV bike service and shuttle bus, last-mile freight, vehicle servicing and repair; 310 car-parking spaces

18. Causeway Foreshore Park

Landscaped garden, kiosk, public toilets, river viewing platform

19. Foreshore Apartments

Housing

20. Ouse Slipway

Access to river, boat storage

21. Phoenix Riverside Apartments & Lofts

Housing

22. The Foundry Hotel

50 rooms, meeting facilities, rooftop gardens and restaurant, cocktail bar, events hire

23. Every Hall Community Centre

Community centre, co-working, Phoenix Canteen, wintergarden, retail

24. Foundry Yards Gallery

Community events, business conferences, exhibitions, performance

25. Foundry Yards

26. Thomas Paine bridge

27. Brook Street Galleries

Housing, makers’ space, retail

28. River Walk Garden and Belvedere

Seating, planters, taproom, pop-up cafés, music venue

29. Foundry Workshops

Makers studios and creative spaces

30. Ouse Villa Apartments

Housing

31. North Street Apartments & Lofts

Housing, nursery

32. Jacobs Square Townhouses & Courtyard Homes

Housing

1. Pells Gardens Courtyard

Housing

2. Spring Lane Courtyard & Mews

Housing

3. Rowe Lane Courtyard & Mews

Housing

4. Pells Lane Courtyard & Mews

Housing

5. Brook Street Co-Housing

Housing

6. Green grocers

Retail

7. The Foundry Apartments

Housing, retail, workspace

8. The Health Hub

Foundry Primary Care Practice, North Street Dental Practice, complementary health services, pharmacy

9. Phoenix House

Offices, training, learning

10. Spring Gardens Apartments

Housing

11. Phoenix Square Live/Work & Creative Studios

Housing and creative space

12. Soap Yard

13. Soap Factory

Bouldering, climbing, skateboarding, dance, Starfish Studios, arts space, juice bar

14. Phoenix Neighbourhood Management

Estate management, mobility services, deliveries, repairs and maintenance, offices

15. Full Cycle & Apartments

Retail, housing

16. Phoenix Cycle Lane

17. Mobility Hub & Services

EV car share, car hire and car club; EV bike service and shuttle bus, last-mile freight, vehicle servicing and repair; 310 car-parking spaces

18. Causeway Foreshore Park

Landscaped garden, kiosk, public toilets, river viewing platform

19. Foreshore Apartments

Housing

20. Ouse slipway

Access to river, boat storage

21. Phoenix Riverside Apartments & Lofts

Housing

22. The Foundry Hotel

50 rooms, meeting facilities, rooftop gardens and restaurant, cocktail bar, events hire

23. Every Hall Community Centre

Community centre, coworking, Phoenix Canteen, wintergarden, retail

24. Foundry Yards Gallery

Community events, business conferences, exhibitions, performance

25. Foundry Yards

26. Thomas Paine bridge

27. Brook Street Galleries

Housing, makers’ space, retail

28. River Walk Garden and Belvedere

Seating, planters, taproom, pop-up cafés, music venue

29. Foundry Workshops

Community centre

30. Ouse Villa Apartments

Housing

31. North Street Apartments & Lofts

Housing, nursery

32. Jacobs Square Townhouses & Courtyard Homes

Housing

“This

looks like

the

beginning

the

future”

Visitor to the Design Festival

The development will transform a neglected brownfield site into a beautiful, green place, providing the town with much-needed homes and jobs, community spaces, a river walk, flood defences and health centre. At the heart of the neighbourhood will be a series of public squares connecting to a community canteen, event hall, taproom, fitness centre, workspace and makers’ studios, much of which will be housed within repurposed industrial structures. Shared courtyards, parks, green corridors and rooftop gardens will enable social interaction, promote communal living and provide habitats for local wildlife.

The masterplan for the Phoenix comprises 18 different housing blocks designed by 13 different architects. This rich mix gives the neighbourhood diversity, character and housing choice, allowing a truly mixed-income neighbourhood. The homes are primarily apartments – not apartments as we have come to know them in the UK, but solid, natural, double-aspect homes where air circulates well and natural daylight illuminates the space.

The Phoenix Industrial Estate in 2022

The North Street area and Phoenix Industrial Estate, although neglected today, played a crucial role in the history of Lewes and wider Sussex. It was home to the Phoenix Ironworks, established on the site by John Every in 1861. At its peak, it comprised multiple workshops and foundry buildings, supplying railings, bandstands and decorative ironwork across the county and beyond. In more recent years, the site played host to much of Lewes’s creative community, with art studios, a theatre and music venues on the site. A fire broke out in 2014, accelerating the site’s decline.

The site was marked for potential redevelopment in the early 2000s, resulting in a series of failed proposals, including the plans by investment fund Santon for the North Street Quarter. At the same time, a group of local people established Lewes Phoenix Rising with the aim of making sure that the plans being developed were consistent with the town’s needs for more affordable housing and workspace. Human Nature acquired the site in 2019.

The Phoenix Project Design Festival

Community

The Phoenix will be a neighbourhood for everyone, with abundant green space, community facilities and new river walk

“More

than

anything,

the

Phoenix

suggests

that

living

sustainably

will

make

for

better

life”

Meredith Bowles, principal, Mole Architects

The Foundry Yards will be the civic heart of the Phoenix. Built around two industrial heritage structures, the Every Hall and the Foundry Workshops, this pedestrianised square will lead on to an elevated Belvedere and a new riverside walk. On the square will be a community canteen, serving low-cost seasonal food; co-working and creative makers’ space; taproom; hotel and restaurant; a new events and music space.

The Phoenix will embrace its position at the edge of the Ouse, opening up the riverfront to Lewes. A boardwalk will run the length of the Phoenix, connecting to Willey's Bridge in the north and the Causeway Foreshore Park to the south. It will widen in the centre, where elevated gardens, the Belvedere, will provide a place to sit and take in views of the river and Downs. Here it will connect to a new pedestrian bridge across the Ouse to Malling. A launch point and boat house will sit at the southern end of the site.

The Foundry Yards (Credit: Human Nature with Periscope / Carlos Penálver)

The Every Hall (previously the Hammonds building) was built between 1860-1873 and used as the main casting hall in the Phoenix Ironworks. We plan to use the building as a community club, flexible co-working space and community canteen, which will serve seasonal low-cost food. The building will open on to the Foundry Yards to the west, with the structure extended to incorporate a winter garden to the south-east. A mezzanine will provide additional desk space and allow access from the Belvedere and riverside walk.

The Foundry Workshops, originally used as a Smiths shop by the Phoenix Ironworks, will sit to the west of the Foundry Yards. It will continue the site’s long history of manufacture and creativity by providing rentable workspace for makers, artists and craftspeople, some of which will be shared. The building will also house a microbrewery and, at mezzanine level, a taproom, which will open on to the Belvedere.

The Soap Factory opening on to the Soap Yard (Credit: Human Nature with Periscope)

Opening on to the Soap Yard, a new public space, will be a family-friendly sports and wellness centre in The Soap Factory, once home to John Gosnell soap manufacturers. It will particularly appeal to the interests of children, teenagers and young adults – groups not always well catered for in Lewes. We are working with partners to explore the inclusion of music studios, a juice bar, fitness rooms, an indoor skatepark, parkour and bouldering centre.

Design & services

The Phoenix will be inherently sustainable – in the way it is designed, how it is built and through the lives its residents are able to lead

The Phoenix will be particularly notable for its use of structural timber, which will be used on all new buildings on site (with the exception of the Mobility Hub). Engineered timber offers the structural strength of ‘traditional’ materials, such as concrete and steel, but with lower embodied carbon. In fact, timber sourced from sustainable, well-managed forests is regenerative – it sequesters carbon, giving timber structure buildings a negative carbon impact overall.

We also intend to, as the architect Duncan Baker-Brown has put it, ‘mine the Anthropocene’: that is, reuse materials that have already been created and therefore retain and capture their embodied carbon. In addition to retention of three industrial heritage structures and our office, Phoenix House, we are conducting an audit to reveal what site materials can be reused in building structures, such as steel trusses and cladding, brick walls and buttressing, and what can be recycled for ‘cut and fill’ (to level and landscape the site) or reconstituted as bricks.

CLT structures and wall cassette system (Credit: TDO)

We intend to create a place that inspires and enables all to live well within the planet’s means, providing excellent recycling, waste management and composting facilities onsite. The latter provides a good example of the Phoenix circular economy: food waste will be composted, providing fertilisation for urban farming, where food is grown for the neighbourhood canteen, cafés and restaurant. We are providing spaces for residents to set up their own ventures focused on upcycling, repair and reuse: what can’t be fixed or upcycled will be sorted on site for recycling, with only the residual material collected by the council.

“Sustainability

the

heart

everything

from

construction

methodology

through

the

masterplan”

Kathryn Firth, director, masterplanning and urban design, Arup

We intend to implement a neighbourhood-wide energy system and grid, characterised by highly efficient buildings and renewable energy. The latter will be generated through rooftop photovoltaics (PV) and by off-site renewable energy facilities. For heat generation, our favoured options are ground and water source heat pumps. The overall strategy is informed by site-specific climatic analysis for passive, low-energy comfort conditioning, ventilation and daylighting, including analyses of temperature, humidity, solar energy and other factors that affect design.

The Phoenix will also promote the practice of shared living: of space, resources, amenities and ideas. The neighbourhood will provide community centres and outdoor space – including courtyards, play areas, gardens and green roofs – that encourage interaction between people of all ages. The culture of sharing will extend to a library of things (where tools and utensils can be borrowed), electric car club and hire service and public squares, such as the Foundry Yards. The homes in the neighbourhood are mostly apartments, from compact studios to larger family flats as opposed to detached houses and, although will have ‘defensible’ outdoor spaces, courtyards and shared green space are favoured over private gardens.

Courtyard homes on the Phoenix (Credit: Human Nature with Periscope / Carlos Penálver)

The Co-Mobility Hub is among the most important buildings on the Phoenix, channelling vehicles to the southern tip of the neighbourhood, creating streets safe for walking, cycling and for children playing. Space traditionally used for private driveways can instead be put to communal use: shared courtyards, playgrounds and rain gardens.

The Hub will contain parking spaces, an electric car share, car hire and car club; electric bike service and shuttle bus, vehicle servicing and repair, and a ‘last-mile’ freight facility – carrying goods into the neighbourhood. Services such as car hire will be operated by an app, allowing residents to book vehicles whenever needed, reducing the need to own a private car (aided by the fact that most daily needs can be met within a short walk).