Play area at The Green Quarter
09/01/2025
What Makes a Happy Home?
Great places to live are key to happiness, health, a sense of safety and belonging. That’s why we put thoughtful design, community amenities and nature at the heart of our homes.
What do you picture when thinking about the happiest childhood moments? It’s a question Simon Lewis, Planning and Development Director at Berkeley Group, asks himself regularly, “I think, ‘what were the things that made me feel safe and happy? Access to open space is a huge one and neighbourliness. At Berkeley, we’re trying to introduce some of those feelings, those traditions that can get lost.”
As research attests, our sense of happiness, wellbeing, health, safety and belonging are all tied up in our homes. So Simon feels a weight of responsibility to “deliberately plan how to use space, whether that’s open space, internal space, the events we programme or the homes themselves – it’s all designed to create that feeling of safety and belonging”.
Hartland Village in Hampshire is surrounded by woodland
Feel-good nature
Two linchpins are communities and nature. “All over Britian, nature is in crisis; there are fewer birds and butterflies, more paved over gardens, fewer street trees,” says Jessica Lewis, Group Head of Sustainable Places at Berkeley Group. “Our focus is on nature recovery and designing biodiverse, multifunctional green and blue spaces.”
Indeed, research shows that living near, engaging in, and feeling psychologically connected to the natural world is associated with better mental health. Not only that, these spaces “have knock-on benefits for air and noise pollution and increased flood resilience”, notes Jessica.
We’re committed to delivering 580 acres of new or improved natural habitat, including 246 acres of woodland, 160 acres of nature-rich grassland and 56 acres of green roofs.
And those innovations provide tangible feel-good benefits. “We create spaces that allow for a moment of peace in people’s daily lives, whether it’s a jog through nature before work or spending time in one of our communal gardens,” says Jessica.
White City Living
Trees are a Tonic
At White City Living in West London, we’ve planted more than 430 new trees, and focus on re-establishing the native species. Research has found that exposure to trees is associated with far-reaching health benefits including reduced pollution and exposure to the sun’s harmful rays, improved mood, better short-term memory, reduced fatigue and depression, better capacity to cope with stress and increased happiness.
They matter for the climate, too. “In areas with no tree cover, on a hot day you’ve got no natural shelter from the sun, whereas tree cover reduces temperatures by several degrees. In terms of health and wellbeing that’s significant,” says Simon.
Jessica explains how on searingly hot days “plants retain water and slowly release that back into the atmosphere, which helps to cool down the city”.
We’ve also moved from “the manicured lawn with a border of flowers to a much more natural – and ultimately more interesting landscape”, says Jessica. “We don’t cut long grasses, because we want to keep that habitat for invertebrates during the winter.”
At Kidbrooke Village, we’ve seen the return of herons, kingfishers and peregrine falcons. “Because the habitat we created attracts insects which feed small mammals and amphibians, which in turn attract the larger birds,” says Jessica.
Kidbrooke Village
Nurturing Communities
Sense of community is another key consideration. “We speak to the community and ask what they’d like to see in terms of open space, what’s missing locally,” says Simon. “You may have an abundance of playing pitches but not many areas where you can spend time in a more leisurely way.
“At Poplar Riverside, for example, the local community hadn’t appreciated how close they were to the River Lee, because the gasworks site we regenerated had closed off public access for well over 150 years.” In the future there will be a 400m long riverside walkway for everyone to enjoy.
Poplar Riverside walkway
In terms of facilities, sites have a Community Plan, which extends out to the local community. “There could be events like open-air cinema, celebrations of different festivals, farmers’ markets, sporting occasions where residents and the local community can come together,” says Simon.
Jessica highlights The Green Quarter, in Southall, where Parkside Yards “has a creative arts hub and ceramics studio but we also have a tree nursery, where we’ve brought in local schoolchildren to plant trees. The Parkside Yards community and creative hub is in partnership with Open Southall, which holds community events. We also have a giant jumping pillow, and the first padel courts on a new development in England.”
Parkside Yards launch event at The Green Quarter
Opportunities to Socialise
There is an emphasis on mental health, too, “At Hartland Village we have a Men’s Sheds Association area, providing local men with space to socialise, and there’s support helping people back into work, whether that’s us giving people work experience or providing some mentoring, talking about our experiences,” says Jessica.
Residents’ facilities at our developments all promote a sense of community. At Oakhill in Kent, the Residents’ Club provides a popular hub for socialising with a co-working lounge, gym and a deluxe private cinema room, for enjoying a movie with family and friends. It is set within 30 acres of stunning mature parkland, too. While Prince of Wales Drive in Battersea offers a music room, library and games area.
Oakhill private cinema room
Bowling alley at Grand Union
“People want to live somewhere that has integrity and character, so if you preserve part of the existing fabric of a site, people have more of an emotional attachment to it,” says Simon.
At Bromley-by-Bow in East London, our landscape architect researched what was there even before the gasworks. “It was marshes made up of this flowing landscape of parcels of land, so we asked ourselves, ‘how could we reintroduce this historical form?’ Through our proposals we’ve created the impression that landscape has always been there, with the built environment rising up between,” says Simon.
Our homes influence everything from our sleep, to our health, to how safe we feel, while research has shown that both well-managed open spaces and having a sense of belonging within our community are integral to wellbeing. It’s why, Jessica’s proudest achievement at Berkeley Group is “creating places where nature is abundant, and people can thrive”.