dred weirs within the city. The garden contains other
references to the city’s industrial past. The bronze
vessels created by the Asquith Design Partnership
are reminiscent of the crucibles used in steelmak-
ing, though they gush with water rather than with
molten metal. Other elements of the scheme, such
as planters and bollards, were also cast in bronze to
echo Sheffield’s history as a metal-working city.
Design development
To the uninformed visitor, the Peace Gardens appear
to be as much of one piece as Newcastle’s Blue
Carpet, yet the design process was very different.
The Peace Gardens involved a very large design
team, mostly drawn from within the Council’s own
ranks, but augmented by artists specially commis-
sioned to work on the project. Although the Council
began to think about the redesign of the gardens
around 1995, the construction phase was astonish-
ingly rapid with work starting on site in October 1998
and finishing in time for Prince Charles’s fiftieth birth-
day tour of Britain in November of the same year.The design process was also strongly influenced by
the public consultation exercise held in 1995 and
was also subject to much attention from local politi-
cians and media. In the early stages, high-profile
masterplanners had been consulted. A masterplan
produced by Allies and Morrison showed most of
the area paved and was shelved once the public had
expressed their opinion. The in-house team assem-
bled by Sheffield City Council was very large. Lyn
Mitchell, a landscape architect from the Department
of Design and Property, was the overall coordinator
for the Heart of the City Public Realm Works. Her
colleague Jill Ray was lead designer for Town Hall
Square, while Richard Watts, a landscape architect
from the city’s Department of Planning, Transport
and Highways, was lead designer for the Peace