The Co-Operative Department Store
From its previous life as The Co-Operative Department Store in the centre of Coventry, KDA worked with Corstorphine + Wright on this interior landscape and open space. The development provides luxury residential living with 63 new one and two-bedroom dwellings, a private residents’ lounge and sky terrace.
The completed development has been awarded the Small Residential Development of the Year (fewer than 100 units) at the 2020 Midlands Residential Property Awards.
The residents’ park is the signature feature of the scheme. The client, Edg Property, were looking for a uniquely holistic living space within the atrium of the historic building and its residential and retail development. The interior space should create visual impact and interest from its raised podium landscape upwards and from all floor levels to its glass roof – for all to see and enjoy.
Continuing the theme set by existing internal, rectilinear steel structures, the planting, raised beds and floorspace had to meet access and load-bearing confines as well as allow free-flowing visitor access and informal, casual seating areas.
Tree selection needed to consider visual impact from all levels, without creating maintenance and canopy issues. The slow-growing evergreen needle-like Italian Cypress were a perfect fit, reaching majestically towards the glass panels within the roof space.
The planting theme focused on delicate, exotic bamboos and shrubs that would thrive within an interior vented landscape, including Miscanthus, Stipa, Convolvulus, Cordyline, Fatsia, Nandina, Chusqua, Euphorbia. Artificial glass gave a clean, crisp, ever-green finish.
Image credit: Corstorphine + Wright and Daniel Shearing
