Project Newton is a nine-hectare open innovation district on a former landfill site in east Cambridge.

Periscope was commissioned by Mission Street to provide a strategic masterplan design for Parcel A, the site of major landscape intervention and for the detailed design of Phase 1. Situated a short cycling distance along the Tins from Cambridge central railway station, the site is characterised by impermeable and disconnected industrial clusters bordering the residential neighbourhoods of Cherry Hinton.

Nature-based solutions were proposed to address specific environmental constraints, including water management and land contamination, promoting seasonality through biodiverse plating and a mix of native and non-native planting to future-proof climate and disease resilience.

Our proposal condenses the region’s landscape character, formed of chalk geology and fenlands, and the specific site’s history, centred around excavation and extraction, into a unique landscape for human and non-human life. The wider project strategy includes two further parcels forming a 22.6-hectare contribution to East Cambridge ecological corridor.

The landscape programme caters to all ages and abilities, balancing prescribed areas with those that are flexible and open to interpretation for informal interactions and events. Public engagement sessions with the local community and including codesign with students from local school supported a hybrid planning application, submitted at the end of 2023 and targeting Phase 1 construction start in late 2024.