A great masterplan has the power to inspire meaningful change. Our team of masterplanners and urban designers take HLM’s pragmatic, creative understanding of people, place and nature to deliver healthy, safe and sustainable places where communities thrive.
Masterplanning and urban design
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Long-term placemaking strategies
Our masterplanning, placemaking, landscape, sustainability and social value expertise has helped deliver successful strategies that cross sectors and typologies. We’ve helped our clients secure funding, deliver projects, and create meaningful legacies.
Property is a powerful tool to affect change; economically, socially and environmentally, but this influence can only be exerted when we understand the full picture. We develop long-term placemaking strategies, and targeted mixed-use urban regeneration. We carry out comprehensive estate optimisation to identify opportunities for efficiencies, re-purposing and rationalisation. And we’re excited to reimagine placemaking within tech-industrial, education and living environments in campus and innovation districts.
Our strategies foster collaboration, innovation, and sustainable growth, ensuring these districts and destinations thrive as integral parts of the urban ecosystem.
Masterplanning lead
A masterplan helps to shape our future environment through inspiring communities and decision makers to support the changes required. At HLM, we combine creativity and pragmatism to craft places that connect people and foster commercial partnerships while championing sustainability. Guided by analysis, applied innovation, commercial astuteness and social value, our masterplans reimagine environments as memorable destinations where communities and nature thrive together.
John Richards
Our expertise
We design inclusive communities, welcoming to all with easy access to quality green public realm. Places where people can lead safe and healthy lives; accessible, affordable and happy. Adaptable environments that enhance social interaction, culture and identity.
We analyse local characteristics to create places inspired by local character; buildings, streets and spaces that incorporate the best-loved aspects of the surrounding townscape and landscape.
Our masterplanning team designs well-connected places. We aim for permeable 15-minute neighbourhoods with easy access to safe walking and cycling routes, well served by public transport – places that encourage active travel, and provide a relaxed environment to enjoy where cars are no longer the preferred choice.
Creating long-lasting social value is central to HLM’s masterplanning approach. We grow strong communities through participatory governance. We encourage residents to take an active role in how their neighbourhood will be designed and managed in the future. This includes setting up stewardship bodies and promoting community-led management of open spaces and public realm.
HLM promotes and manages this vitally important process, facilitating collaboration and engagement between our masterplanning clients, key stakeholders and local communities. This enables clients to connect with their communities, develop valuable partnerships and realise tangible ambitions.
Sustainability and wellbeing sit at the heart of everything HLM does – and masterplanning is no exception. By 2025, every HLM project will meet RIBA 2030 Sustainable Outcomes.
Working in collaboration with HLM’s sustainability specialists and landscape team, our masterplans incorporate effective decarbonisation strategies; they’re designed to reduce embodied carbon, accommodate low energy buildings, and create healthy, safe communities.
We believe in a landscape-led approach, maximising the value of green and blue infrastructure. We retain and enhance key habitats to deliver Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) targets for the benefit of nature, and for the health and wellbeing of residents.
Prior to project inception – or RIBA Stage -1 as we sometimes call it – our masterplanning, placemaking and urban design clients take us on to assess the existing and potential impact of their sites; the social, cultural, environmental and economic components. We developed an innovative digital platform, HLM Place, to support this essential early work.
As part of our impact and analysis service, we also offer business case management and development, aligned with UK HM Treasury five case model requirements.
To understand and advise on the financial and economic viability of our clients’ sites, our team collaborates with leading economic specialists to consider investment opportunities, value creation and long term financial sustainability.
To address emerging challenges in masterplanning and the built environment, we’re investing in new ways of thinking, creative approaches, and new technologies in design.
Our masterplanning and R&D teams have collaborated to develop game-changing concepts; innovative ecosystems, the living street, and industrial heartlands. All designed to encourage economic growth, facilitate new community infrastructure, bring nature back into our everyday lives and improve our travel infrastructure.
Placemaking for all
We design inclusive communities, welcoming to all with easy access to quality green public realm. Places where people can lead safe and healthy lives; accessible, affordable and happy. Adaptable environments that enhance social interaction, culture and identity.
We analyse local characteristics to create places inspired by local character; buildings, streets and spaces that incorporate the best-loved aspects of the surrounding townscape and landscape.
Our masterplanning team designs well-connected places. We aim for permeable 15-minute neighbourhoods with easy access to safe walking and cycling routes, well served by public transport – places that encourage active travel, and provide a relaxed environment to enjoy where cars are no longer the preferred choice.
Community engagement and connection
Creating long-lasting social value is central to HLM’s masterplanning approach. We grow strong communities through participatory governance. We encourage residents to take an active role in how their neighbourhood will be designed and managed in the future. This includes setting up stewardship bodies and promoting community-led management of open spaces and public realm.
HLM promotes and manages this vitally important process, facilitating collaboration and engagement between our masterplanning clients, key stakeholders and local communities. This enables clients to connect with their communities, develop valuable partnerships and realise tangible ambitions.
Masterplans for people and planet
Sustainability and wellbeing sit at the heart of everything HLM does – and masterplanning is no exception. By 2025, every HLM project will meet RIBA 2030 Sustainable Outcomes.
Working in collaboration with HLM’s sustainability specialists and landscape team, our masterplans incorporate effective decarbonisation strategies; they’re designed to reduce embodied carbon, accommodate low energy buildings, and create healthy, safe communities.
We believe in a landscape-led approach, maximising the value of green and blue infrastructure. We retain and enhance key habitats to deliver Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) targets for the benefit of nature, and for the health and wellbeing of residents.
Place impact analysis and economics
Prior to project inception – or RIBA Stage -1 as we sometimes call it – our masterplanning, placemaking and urban design clients take us on to assess the existing and potential impact of their sites; the social, cultural, environmental and economic components. We developed an innovative digital platform, HLM Place, to support this essential early work.
As part of our impact and analysis service, we also offer business case management and development, aligned with UK HM Treasury five case model requirements.
To understand and advise on the financial and economic viability of our clients’ sites, our team collaborates with leading economic specialists to consider investment opportunities, value creation and long term financial sustainability.
Innovative thinking
To address emerging challenges in masterplanning and the built environment, we’re investing in new ways of thinking, creative approaches, and new technologies in design.
Our masterplanning and R&D teams have collaborated to develop game-changing concepts; innovative ecosystems, the living street, and industrial heartlands. All designed to encourage economic growth, facilitate new community infrastructure, bring nature back into our everyday lives and improve our travel infrastructure.
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HLM Architects joins the New European Bauhaus Community
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Modern methods, real outcomes: re-thinking live hospital redevelopment at Prince Charles Hospital
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Reflecting on two decades of thoughtful design with Altnagelvin Hospital
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Joining the dots: unlocking Sheffield’s Public Sector potential through digital insight
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Navigating New Constraints in the University Sector: A Strategic Approach to Estate Rationalisation and Optimisation
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St George’s barracks redevelopment plan receives outline planning
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Northfleet Harbourside gets green light
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Matlock County Hall redevelopment plans progress to the next stage
