The challenge was to sensitively integrate a major new supermarket into a sensitive edge-of-town environment, fronting an urban area on one side, a rural one on another and running alongside the embankment of the former iron railway. Our design opens up access to this embankment, a protected scheduled ancient monument, as well as providing links to the adjacent new housing development. The landscape is conceived as a ‘green cocoon’ around the new building, with a new public realm on the town side, including tree planting and a rain garden. On the rural side, seating and wildflower meadows run alongside the new footpath. The building, partially cut into the hillside landscape, has a large sloping biodiverse roof. Other ecological interventions include a bat tower and variety of hibernacula features throughout the site.