Community Engagement at OmVed Gardens
< Back to ProjectsRegeneration of an urban wasteland
OmVed Gardens is the result of a community led regeneration of a derelict garden centre in Highgate. Opened in 2025, the CIC has created a verdant city oasis where nature and diverse ways of thinking can flourish. A place where they can realise their ambition to regenerate their relationship with the land and share what they learn in the process.
Developing in the Highgate Conservation Area
Getting this ambitious scheme through planning on a contentious site in the Highgate conservation area was no mean feat. Genuine, ongoing stakeholder engagement was essential.
We have good relationships with the local community – including the Highgate Society and Highgate Neighbourhood Forum – and were asked to help present the sensitive concept design in a series of engagement events. We helped the client prepare for these events and respond directly to important issues around views, parking, and access.
During several engagement events, the design team showcased proposals for this combined landscape and architectural scheme of new pavilions and community amenities. Discussions centred on ensuring community access and integration with the landscape. Valuable feedback addressed the design language, the site’s role in the local ecological green chain and ways to embrace local organisations. This collaborative process gathered insight and enabled the design team to refine the scheme to respect Highgate’s unique character.
In Summer 2020, the proposals won planning permission.
The Artists Workshop
In 2019, Collective Works were also appointed to support the design development at Omved Gardens alongside HASA Architects and Studio Gazerwitz. This involved sketching and developing ideas for the gatehouse and forge, which later developed into the Artist’s Workshop.
This would be a place to host artists and craftspeople and act as a venue for inclusive workshops and events. It needed to support the rebuilding of the natural environment and help to re‐wild a site that had been taken over by parking and hardscape. In short, our brief was to make something practical, sustainable and beautiful.
Ethical material choices and design to net-zero
With the award-winning Highgate Bowl as context, we developed a fresh set of ideas to challenge the masterplan, and include sustainable and ethical choices for the Artist’s Workshop.
Our concept design references boulders, land art and a rammed earth feature wall. Within its transformed setting, we emphasised the use of sustainable building materials, alongside ethical material choices, such as using only locally sourced timbers and reclaimed slate.
During the design, we calculated the embodied carbon of the materials to help us to design to net zero standards. Our concept design was on target to meet RIBA 2030 climate target, in the spirit of the regenerative transformation of the site. We helped achieve this by proposing high-performance building fabric, passive stack ventilation, solar shading and orientation.
Where art and creativity meet wellbeing
Following planning success, Studio Gazerwitz worked with Piers Smerin on the detailed designs for the buildings on site, resolution of the overall landscape scheme, as well as the addition of a rooftop garden.
In 2025, OmVed Gardens re-opened to the public, launching an exciting events and exhibition programme, including artist Vivienne Schadinsky, ethicist Dr. Helen Barnard, and musician Brian d’Souza.
More details on their upcoming events here.
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