RIBA South West Award for Phase 1 of Nansledan, Newquay

Although only partially complete, Nansledan continues to win countless awards, including this one from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

The judges described it as “a coherent and high-quality extension to Newquay’s previous edge-of-town condition. Where the existing edge began to fray with a mix of residential and commercial settlements of varying quality, this new 4,000-home masterplan has been carefully laid out to create several new neighbourhoods and cross-valley connections”.

At the time of the award 300 homes had been completed, as well as a popular new school, a series of well used high street and commercial squares, a clear network of primary, secondary and tertiary street types, and residential courtyard clusters where servicing, parking and ancillary occupied spaces make best use of what might otherwise be back-land areas.

The judges praised the “diverse architectural language [which] suggests incremental growth, which, in time, will give the impression that this place evolved. This has been achieved by a rule that states that no single street is designed by a single design team, resulting in a blurring of boundaries between plots built by each of the three developers”.

While commended the architectural variety of painted timber boarding, render, granite, hanging slate, brickwork and art-deco embellishments “the real achievement here is at the masterplan level, with a new urban settlement that shows great townscape and landscape-led placemaking potential”.