Common Ground

The findings, interpretations and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Investment Bank.

Third places

Two thousand years ago, the Roman architect Vitruvius identified the three most quoted imperatives of well-designed buildings: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas, in other words structural integrity, utility, and what can best be translated as delight. Like much of Roman architecture itself, these imperatives have stood the test of time. However, while Vitruvius articulated the foundations for well-designed buildings, he did not highlight their collective responsibility in creating the surrounding public space – the common ground that stitches buildings into the urban fabric of civil society.

Common grounds, or Third Places, as the urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg called them, are public places that serve as a neutral ground for people to form associations. He describes them as the “great variety of public places that host regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.¹” Home, work and the Third Place form an important triad of urban life, with the latter playing the important social function of providing a place for community life. In other words, a Third Place is an integral part of civic life. Most of them give a sense of identity and a place to “belong to” for people who frequent them. It also becomes a place “to see and be seen in”, and a place for real-world social networking.

This approach is exhibited in our refurbishment of Trafalgar Square in London. Historically, the square has been the civic centrepiece of the city, but the nonstop tide of traffic had turned Nelson’s Column and the fountains into a traffic island, visited only by those willing to risk life and limb, and of course, pigeons. There was an obvious need, and support, for change. After consulting over 180 separate institutions and thousands of individuals, as well as forensically analysing the movement of people and vehicles in and around the square, we arrived at a solution that could reclaim the square for the public. The most significant move was the closure of the north side of the square to traffic and the creation of a broad new terrace, which forms an appropriate setting for the National Gallery and links it via a flight of new steps to the heart of the square and its fountains. Below the terrace, also accessible by lifts, a new café with outdoor seating provides a much-needed spot to rest and take in the sights.

After its successful revamp, Trafalgar Square regained its lustre and appeal. Post-occupancy studies show that the closure of the North Terrace has led to an acceptable delay for cars but eased the flow of public transport immeasurably. People have voted with their feet, and the square is now frequented by 13 times the number of pedestrians compared to earlier use. What is more, the National Gallery reported a significant increase in visitor numbers. The square now hosts many annual events, including cultural celebrations, religious festivals, political rallies and commercial events. The diversity of these events reflects the diversity of Londoners, signalling an openness and inclusivity for which London is celebrated.

More recently, decades of car-centric urbanism had transformed the once grand quayside at Marseille into a car park, with rows upon rows of stationary cars. In the run-up to Marseille’s designation as the City of Culture in 2013, we undertook, with Michel Desvigne, a regeneration project of the port and its surrounding milieu. Our first step was to greatly reduce the number of parked cars, using movable bollards to designate the space as pedestrian, and to relocate the boathouses occupying the harbour’s edge onto purpose-built, floating platforms on the water. These simple yet effective moves allowed the quayside – when re-paved – to be reclaimed as a space for people. The addition of an ombrière, a slender and reflective pavilion, provides shelter from the Mediterranean sun, and frames social events such as markets or the spontaneous crowds gathering around a busker. This symbolic space also became the gathering point of Marseille’s mourning for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, a moving testament to the importance of common ground in sharing grief and empathy.

Much like revitalising the civic foci of historic cities, creating new social spaces in cities is crucial to their appeal and liveability. The firm’s work in Duisburg in the 1990s demonstrated that the trend towards clean, quiet industries has the potential to reinvigorate declining urban areas and create sustainable communities for the future, where home, workplace and recreation are all close by. In place of the zoned and functionally segregated city of the 20th century, it offers a 21st century urban paradigm of mixed-use. The masterplan aimed to draw the life of the city to the waterfront, combining the selective refurbishment of the buildings lining the harbour with new construction to provide housing, offices and space for light-industrial uses, together with a wide range of social and cultural amenities. A guiding principle was the creation of a flexible framework that has allowed elements to be developed independently over time by different architects. New infrastructure and public amenities were put in place first to establish the harbour as an attractive place in which to live and work or to visit. A tree-lined promenade was created along the waterfront and canals were excavated as armatures for new housing development. Apartments are grouped in five-storey terraces, which look out over the water or inland to communal gardens.

In super high-density cities such as Hong Kong, for example, common ground is often in short supply. Adam Frampton’s book Cities Without Ground chronicles Hong Kong’s labyrinthine network of elevated walkways that connect adjacent buildings in a bid to reclaim common ground for pedestrians above the network of inner-city roads. The importance of safeguarding common ground is made more pressing by Hong Kong’s astronomic land values and the shrinking size of dwellings. In the late 1970s, we won the competition to design the new headquarters for the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong’s central business district. Acutely aware of the lack of public space in the heart of the city, we decided to lift the building up and create a permeable public plaza at the base of the building, which could be given back to the community. This undercroft has since played host to what can best be described as the city’s largest weekly picnic – a gathering place for the city’s domestic workers who spend Sundays meeting their friends and taking refuge from the sun and rain under the building. For the better part of thirty years, the building has sheltered these domestic workers offering them a place of respite and camaraderie, a place to share food and gossip, form choirs or rehearse dance choreographies. The design intent illustrates an inclusive approach allowing private buildings to enhance the community by creating a common ground.

Cities are a chequerboard

Cities are a chequerboard of public and private spaces. The eponymous Nolli Map, invented by the Italian architect and cartographer Giambattista Nolli in 1748, distinguishes between public and private spaces, creating an ersatz fingerprint of cities. In the Nolli Map, public space is defined as not only the outdoor streets, squares, courtyards and alleyways, but also the interior of civic buildings such as churches, museums, theatres, cafés, lecture halls, government assemblies and stadia.

This intermeshing of public space and the interior came to the fore on a project we carried out at the turn of the Millennium. The Great Court at the British Museum was one of London's long-lost spaces. Originally an open garden at the heart of the Museum, the courtyard was lost to the public when construction started on the Round Reading Room and its associated book stacks. The departure of the British Library to its current location on Euston Road was the catalyst for reclaiming the courtyard as a common ground. The scale of this undertaking propels it beyond a mere expansion and reconfiguration of the Museum’s facilities into the realm of urban planning. With its free access and long opening hours, the Great Court becomes a grand covered public space at the centre of a city block. Similar in scale to many of London’s smaller public squares, the two-acre piazza – covered by a soaring glass canopy – is available to all, the intersection of public space with the heart of an international museum.

The ownership of public spaces is a complex issue, which goes beyond the question of who owns the property deed, but relates to how welcoming a space feels and how enmeshed it is within the everyday life of the city. The garden square is one of the defining features of London. Like other European cities, London has its grand civic spaces, but no other city has developed the garden square in quite the same way. The majority of such spaces were the product of private largess, often built in the name of a wealthy family or individual, but nearly always meant as a communal amenity.

Today, there are a growing number of spaces such as office porticos and commercial courtyards that operate as public spaces. The relatively recent rise of these “Privately Owned Public Spaces” - or POPS as they have come to be known - has prompted a debate into the nature and meaning of common ground. For-profit governance and heavy-handed surveillance can alienate people, curtail functions and create an exclusive environment. However, private funds that can pay for the creation and maintenance of public spaces bring much-needed investment for the enhancement of the city as municipal budgets become increasingly squeezed. Notwithstanding the relative merits and demerits of POPS, it remains a crucial arena in which we as architects can help shape the common ground in the contemporary city.

A recent positive example is the new European Headquarters for Bloomberg in the City of London. This gave us the opportunity to make a major contribution to the public realm around the building. Bloomberg Arcade – which reinstates a lost portion of Watling Street, an ancient Roman travel route that once connected London to Wales – bisects the site, greatly improving pedestrian flows in the narrow historic streets that surround the building. It also invites people into new restaurants and cafés situated under the covered colonnade. In keeping with Michael Bloomberg’s desire to be a “good neighbour”, the surrounding common ground invites local workers and visitors to dwell in the elegant spaces around the building. Cristina Iglesias’s water sculpture Forgotten Streams pays homage to the ancient Walbrook River that once flowed through the site and serves as a peaceful backdrop amidst the city’s busy ebb and flow.