Landscape creates a green civic campus at University of Bristol’s new Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus

Grant Associates’ landscape and public realm design transforms a strategically located post-industrial site into a new green gateway to Bristol — unlocking connections across Bristol Temple Quarter through a distinctive, biodiverse and welcoming civic landscape that connects the University with the River Avon, Bristol Temple Meads and the wider city.

The University of Bristol’s Sloane Robinson Building at the new Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus officially opened this week, alongside the new station entrance to Bristol Temple Meads, marking a major transformation in the regeneration of one of the UK’s largest regeneration projects, Bristol Temple Quarter. 

The campus strengthens the University’s civic presence, creating a new hub for research, education, enterprise and collaboration at the heart of the city.

The Sloane Robinson Building – the flagship building at the new campus - was designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, with landscape architecture and public realm by Grant Associates. The campus brings together new university buildings with a sequence of green public spaces for students, staff, businesses and the wider community.

Grant Associates’ strategy establishes landscape as the connective fabric of the campus, linking it with Bristol Temple Meads railway station, the riverside and floating harbour walkway and Totterdown Basin. From the outset, the ambition was to create a ‘green civic campus’, combining biodiversity and environmental performance with an inclusive public realm that supports university and city life.

A landscape for university and city life

At the heart of the landscape is University Square, a major new public space and focal point at the entrance to the campus. From here, tree grove arrival spaces, planted terraces and social areas extend towards the riverside and floating harbour walkway, creating places to meet, study, eat and spend time outdoors.

The landscape was designed to accommodate everything from everyday pedestrian and cycle movement to informal learning, socialising and events, with integrated seating and planting helping create smaller, more intimate spaces within the wider campus.

Greening Temple Quarter

The planting strategy draws on the site’s distinctive waterside setting and natural assets, particularly the River Avon and Totterdown Basin. Planting transitions from naturalistic, biodiverse habitats along the water’s edge to more cultivated civic campus spaces, bringing a sense of ‘wildness’ into this formerly industrial part of Bristol.

A total of 126 new trees, representing 37 species, cultivars and hybrids, have been planted across the campus to provide seasonal interest, support biodiversity, create shade and strengthen climate resilience. Grant Associates worked closely with the University’s horticultural team from early design through to completion to develop the tree strategy and species selection, with regular reviews throughout the project.

From the outset, there was a shared ambition to establish a strong green identity from day one. Larger, mature trees were therefore selected for the main civic spaces, responding to the scale of the buildings and providing immediate presence and shade. This is particularly evident at University Square, where a grove of mature trees creates a strong sense of arrival from the new Temple Meads station entrance. Towards the river, a more naturalistic mix of tree sizes and species, developed with the project ecologist, strengthens habitat value and the waterside character.

More than 3,500 sq m of species-rich planting — including rain gardens, pollinator-rich planting, biodiverse roofs, native meadow and aquatic planting — creates a diverse and resilient green and blue infrastructure.

Landscape also extends into and onto the architecture. A striking five-storey-high vertical planted landscape within the Level 1 courtyard garden and three, four-storey-high vertical planted internal gardens on level 2 bring greenery and daylight into the heart of the building, blurring the distinction between interior and exterior spaces while creating a strong green presence visible from the adjacent Temple Meads platforms and the harbour.

Externally, rain gardens integrated throughout the public realm form part of the campus’s sustainable drainage strategy. Designed to capture and temporarily hold surface water during heavy rainfall, they use specially selected planting and growing media able to cope with changing water conditions. This allows the rain gardens to function as both drainage infrastructure and planted landscape, making water management a visible part of the campus while contributing to a more resilient public realm.

Along the upper Harbourside, trees and layered planting create a greener edge overlooking the river, with seating and picnic areas providing places to pause and enjoy the waterfront.

Accessibility and movement are integral to the landscape, with routes designed to negotiate the site’s significant level changes required for flood resilience while connecting the campus with Bristol Temple Meads and the surrounding city.

Chin Chen, Associate Director at Grant Associates, said:

“The Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus gave us the opportunity to rethink what the landscape of a city-centre university could be. We wanted the campus to feel rooted in Bristol — open, green and reconnecting nature with the city, rather than separated from it.

“The waterways and existing ecology gave us the starting point for this transformation journey. From there, landscape became the framework for creating places where students, staff and the wider community can meet, study, relax and spend time outdoors — embedding nature into the everyday life of the campus and the city.”

The completed landscape is intended not simply as the setting for the University’s new building, but as a significant piece of public realm in its own right – opening the campus to the city and contributing to the wider transformation of Bristol Temple Quarter as a more connected, welcoming and green part of the city.

ENDS

Project credits

Client: University of Bristol

Architect: FCBS

Landscape architect: Grant Associates

Engineers: Buro Happold

Project Managers: AECOM

Vertical Planting specialist: Green Fortune

Tree Nursery: Hilliers

Main Contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine

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Editors notes

Grant Associates is a pioneering international landscape architecture practice, whose work reconnects people with nature in insightful, delightful and distinctive ways whilst addressing the global challenges of urbanisation, the climate crisis and biodiversity extinction. Grant Associates’ design process is underpinned by a knowledge of human behaviour, nature and ecological science combined with innovative design technology. The practice combines original thinking, creative collaboration and regenerative design to breathe new life into our cities and landscapes.