Broadgate Public Realm
- Categories Urban & Landscape, Workplace
- Clients British Land
- Completion 2018
- Project Team David Hills, Deborah Saunt, Tom Greenall, Nicola Ibbotson, Iain Jamieson, Marie-Sophie Habermann, Paul Bourel
Deploying Time-Based urban tactics, British Land and DSDHA have delivered innovative designs in three of Broadgate campus’ key public spaces: Broadgate Circle, Finsbury Avenue Square and Broadgate Plaza.
The strategy has been to test alternative spatial arrangements via a series of prefabricated, lightweight landscape components that can be easily reconfigured over time.
These are open-ended, enigmatic timber structures, which function as planters as well as informal seating and, working at a scale between furniture and landscape infrastructure, they offer intimate niches for people to meet, work and relax, while also introducing a new distinctive natural trail throughout the whole campus.
In Finsbury Avenue Square, DSDHA also installed four temporary shop units within a deep ‘inhabited hoarding’, specifically designed to enclose the construction site of Grade II listed 1FA and maintain activity in the public space during the building’s soon to be completed refurbishment.
All these elements have successfully changed the spatial dynamics of Broadgate’s public realm, encouraging alternative forms of inhabitation throughout the day, the week and even the year, as well as opening up the campus to a more diverse audience.
The project originated in 2015, following an invited landscape design competition, when British Land commissioned DSDHA to undertake a strategic review of Broadgate’s public spaces and to prepare a Public Realm Framework Plan. This has been used to guide the design and implementation of improvements that place human experience and wellbeing to the fore, while addressing the changing patterns of use in London’s public spaces.
- Collaborators FFLO
- Contractor Dynamic3, The Whitewall Company, Space Revolution
- Photography Luca Miserocchi, DSDHA, Instagram
Share: