Senior Urban Designer

Role - Senior Urban Designer – Residential Layout Specialist

Location – Birmingham or London

Salary - £50K

Our client, a well-established landscape architecture and urban design practice is looking to add a Senior Urban Designer to its team. They work across a varied range of projects throughout the UK and offer a friendly, collaborative environment with good opportunities for career development and progression.

The ideal Senior Urban Designer will have strong design skills, but just as importantly, know how to make residential layouts actually work. This means being able to balance development numbers and commercial requirements with good placemaking, streets, parking, landscape, drainage and the various technical constraints that come with a site. At Senior level, the role needs someone comfortable taking ownership of a layout, spotting what isn’t working and finding practical solutions, while still making sure the end result is well designed and deliverable.

Senior Urban Designer Essential Requirements

* Residential Design Experience

* Strong professional experience in residential urban design, master planning and detailed layout design, ideally gained within a consultancy, house builder, developer or multidisciplinary practice

* A portfolio demonstrating commercially viable, technically considered and deliverable residential layouts across a range of development sizes

* Experience taking projects from early feasibility and capacity testing through concept master planning, layout development and detailed residential design

* Good understanding of the priorities and commercial requirements of house builders, developers and land promoters

Residential Layout & Placemaking

* Strong understanding of residential layout principles including street hierarchy, blocks, plots, frontage, building lines, density, enclosure and movement

* Ability to maximise development potential while maintaining strong placemaking, landscape and urban design principles

* Good understanding of how housing mix, density, development capacity and design quality work together

* Confidence resolving detailed layout issues including parking, servicing, refuse, cycle storage, amenity space, gardens, overlooking and separation distances

* Ability to interpret site constraints and opportunities and turn them into practical, coherent and deliverable layouts

Technical & Planning Knowledge

* Good working knowledge of the UK residential planning and design process, including experience supporting planning applications.

* Practical understanding of highways, street design, parking standards, drainage, utilities and other technical considerations affecting residential layouts

* Experience coordinating input from highways, drainage, landscape, ecology, arboriculture, BNG, utilities and other technical disciplines

* Ability to identify design and technical conflicts early and work with the wider team to resolve them

* Experience producing or contributing to framework plans, parameter plans, Design and Access Statements, design codes and other planning material

Design & Software Skills

* Strong AutoCAD skills with the ability to produce accurate and well-resolved residential layouts efficiently

* Good graphical and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate ideas clearly through plans, diagrams, sketches and written material

Senior-Level Experience

* Ability to lead residential projects and take ownership of layouts from the initial brief through key planning stages

* Confident presenting and discussing design proposals with clients, local authorities, consultants and other stakeholders

* Experience coordinating multidisciplinary teams and balancing competing design, planning and technical requirements

* Ability to review junior team members' work,…