Making communities
Place-making contributes significantly to the life of a community. But interaction between people and places is complex because a physical environment embodies emotions, aspirations and memories as well as influencing how it is function.
Successful place-making has to address each of these levels. Our designs for the Gateway to Grahame Parkin north London show how they might be interwoven. As it marks the entrance to a large residential estate it has considerable symbolic importance, but the three buildings which form the gateway also provide homes for individuals and families so they need to work at an intimate and detailed scale as well. Similar principles mark all our residential schemes that are large enough to form their own community.
Between large scale symbol and small scale home comes the level of local public realm, the network of routes and spaces around the buildings. They have a crucial bearing on the community because they determine how its members can meet and interact, and reach local amenities within and beyond the site, providing a crucial mediation between the urban scale and their individual homes.