By Kayt Sukel
For more than half a century, Great Britain has worked to protect the Chilterns National Landscape, a designated area of outstanding natural beauty. Its 324 sq mi of verdant hills and valleys are only about 40 mi outside London and are a prime location for development. But the Chilterns Conservation Board continues to ensure that the landscape remains a place where nature and wildlife can flourish.
After acquiring an existing equestrian center surrounded by ancient woodlands in the Chilterns, a creative film and television production studio engaged Atelier Architecture + Design Ltd — a firm that focuses on developing sustainable spaces that blend into the natural landscape — to create a new studio space that would preserve the area’s natural beauty while also providing the technological foundation for post-production work.
“The client’s employees had been working in less-than-favorable conditions in a basement studio in London,” says Stephen Melvin, founder and director at AA+D. The client felt that relocating to the Chilterns would bolster the well-being and creativity of his staff.
The resulting design, called Digital Orchard, merges architecture and landscape. A cloistered walkway will connect offices, meeting spaces, and “dark spaces,” where the theaters and editing suites will be, according to the press kit. Melvin describes the overall campus as a “procession,” where people will be able to easily move from tech spaces to nature.
The buildings will be covered in a highly insulated skin that will support passive heating and ventilation. Rainwater will be recycled for irrigation to maintain the campus’s themed habitats, including wildflower meadows and cherry orchards that are infused into the designs of the courtyard and buildings.
By not thinking of architecture and landscape as “two separate entities,” Melvin says modern designs can “draw power out of the landscape without harming it.” This was especially important with this project, he notes, not only because of how highly regulated development is in the area, but also because the equestrian center had caused significant damage to the land, thanks to the use of rubber cinder surfaces.
“(Digital Orchard) was an opportunity to demonstrate we can have a biodiversity net gain and improve the physical appearance of the site,” he notes. It was also an opportunity to show that a studio with high-tech demands could be supported in a sustainable manner.
“The (dark) spaces are heavily air conditioned, but elsewhere we relied ... on natural light, cross ventilation, and air-source heat pumps. We also are looking at sustainable drainage,” he explains. Far too often, designers do not consider drainage. This is especially important in the Chilterns, where the area’s chalk streams are fiercely protected.
Ultimately, Melvin says, Digital Orchard is an example of shifting a paradigm and helping modern designs more easily connect with the natural landscapes they inhabit.
“We can relearn how to live with nature,” Melvin says.
Kayt Sukel is a science and technology writer based outside Houston.
This article first appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Civil Engineering as "Reconnecting with Nature."
