Bankside

Working with a client group uniting highly diverse interests, we developed a strategy to increase and enhance the public spaces of Bankside, stretching from the river to the Elephant and Castle. Our strategy responded to the area’s historically layered character and different users, improving the sense of connection between the cultural, commercial, creative and residential textures of the area, and added to the many informal parks and public places in this district that had escaped formal planning. The Bankside Urban Forest is a participatory and open-ended initiative, to which many different groups have contributed by delivering projects.

Over the course of ten years, project partners have built a series of public spaces, at Tate Modern, Redcross Way and Great Suffolk Street. We have designed two projects that are completed, the River Walk and Flat Iron Square, both for the London Borough of Southwark. The River Walk provides accessible connections between areas of divergent character, working between the medieval scale of Clink Street and the infrastructural scale of Tate Modern. At Flat Iron Square, we have carved a public space from land previously dominated by highway. This small clearing in the city now supports uses ranging from children’s parties to poetry and music events.

Across both boom and bust and shifts in public sector priority, our incremental and adaptive strategy has proved its strength, providing a framework for integrating new niches for collective life in this historic but dynamic area.