Building With Nature

Image by Nick Guttridge

Building with Nature (BwN) allows designers, housebuilders or developers to independently demonstrate they have put people and wildlife at the heart of their development, with a site-specific, placemaking focus.

It is an independently reviewed, industry tested, evidence-based set of standards which delivers a range of benefits for developers, it can:

• reduce planning uncertainty.
• assist in defining a robust set of holistic design principles.
• supports marketing, communications and sales (with strong evidence to support increases in property value).
• act as a physical demonstration of corporate environmental and social responsibility objectives.

Working with a Building with Nature assessor through the life of your project – either as part of the design team or as a standalone discipline – allows an iterative assessment of your project to ensure opportunities to maximise people’s wellbeing, opportunities for wildlife and water systems.

We are seeing BwN increasingly appear as a policy requirement for allocated sites, allowing authorities to require independent verification for the quality of Green Infrastructure, either at design or construction phase.

A Building with Nature accreditation demonstrates an independent commitment to proactively responding to the climate crisis, in a flexible way, responding to the project location and scale. It will ensure your project demonstrates benefits beyond the boundary of the scheme, considering a site within its context, and maximising opportunities to reinforce and grow networks for people, water and wildlife.

BwN is an embodiment of Masterplanning, Landscape and Assessment’s approach to shaping the built environment - we look to realise a vision of a sustainable, beneficial development which positively contributes to place, delivers a positive commercial return for our clients and which positively impacts the environment, thorough a context driven, landscape led approach. Ultimately creating sustainable places where people of all ages want to work, live and play.

Head of Landscape Architecture and Masterplanning, Danielle Percy is a Building with Nature Approved Assessor and a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute (CMLI).