Waterbeach: Designing the First Garden-Style Rental Community for Greystar

Greystar has launched a new garden-style rental housing strategy, targeting the delivery of up to 20,000 professionally managed rental homes across high-growth UK locations over the next four years. Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire is where that strategy begins, and it's a project we've been deeply involved in from the outset, both as design team and as a close collaborator in shaping the approach itself.

A Strategy rooted in design

Garden-style rental housing isn't a new idea globally. Greystar has refined the model across international markets for decades. What's new is its application to the UK: lower and mid-rise homes, generous green space, shared amenities and professional management, adapted to meet UK planning requirements, renter expectations and the needs of growing regional economies.

We worked closely with Greystar to develop the design principles that sit behind that strategy and to give them built form at Waterbeach. It's a collaboration we're proud of, and one that has shaped thinking about how this model can work across the UK's high-growth locations.

The site

Waterbeach is a 6,500-home masterplan being delivered by Urban&Civic on the former Waterbeach Barracks and Airfield site, four miles north of Cambridge. The Lakeside East and Lakeside West parcels sit on the northern edge of Waterbeach Lake, one of the most prominent and characterful positions within the wider development.

Cambridge is one of the UK's most dynamic employment centres, with a science, technology and life sciences sector that has grown faster than the housing supply around it for years. Waterbeach is a direct and considered response to that gap, and the garden-style approach is well suited to the people who live and work there.

Designing for community

Working alongside Urban&Civic and the wider multidisciplinary team, the proposals bring together 387 Build to Rent homes across four residential blocks, arranged around a landscape-led public realm that opens directly onto the lake. A lakeside boardwalk and social plaza sit at the heart of the scheme, conceived as genuinely social spaces that draw residents and the wider community together.

Residents' amenity, flexible commercial floorspace, co-working facilities, a gym and more than 7,000 sq ft of retail and amenity space complete the programme. The design has been guided throughout by a simple ambition: a neighbourhood that responds positively to its lakefront setting, supports sustainable and healthy lifestyles, and feels like a real part of the Waterbeach community.

Looking ahead

A Reserved Matters Application has been submitted, seeking approval for appearance, access, landscaping, layout and scale. Subject to planning approval, construction is expected to begin in Q1 2027.

The scheme is backed by Greystar Equity Partners Europe II, the largest residential fund of its kind raised in Europe, which gives the strategy the reach to move at scale once planning is secured.

Waterbeach is the first of many to come, with Greystar describing it as a blueprint for housing across the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, the M4 and beyond. The thinking behind the scheme, how a landscape-led, lower-rise community can genuinely work for long-term renters in a high-growth location, is timely and transferrable, and we look forward to the future.