of architecture - Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole

the public realm was both stunning and shocking to me and made me think of the studies of women
and department stores in the 19th century. We had another encounter with a group of young boys
who explained why the space designed for football was useless and the alternative they chose. This
resulted in proposals of social sporty spaces that are not exactly for sport and not exactly for hanging
out, but shared space for both activities and for both genders.
Barking Town Square
In Barking in East London, private developers obtained the right to build tall and dense in return
for providing a new library and a new square. Barking is a place where no private investments have
been made for 60 years with only social housing being built over the last decades. The economy of
Barking is played out in the political landscape-anxiety about immigration, which led to the election
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
of far-right politicians. These circumstances could not be ignored in our work with the square where
facilitating for more than one thing at a time is essential.
Our developer was indeed not very interested in public space per se and was anxious that a public
space might reduce the value of the flats if there were too many locals hanging about. Hence, we
ended up as double agents, as we were designing - with someone else on our minds - a space for a
developer who was merely interested in the value of the buildings: The people of Barking, who indeed
could do with a new valuable public space, were our ‘real’ clients. In London, before the change
of mayor, a programme similar to the ‘100 Public Spaces in Barcelona’ was implemented. However,
only five public spaces have been completed in five years, where our square in Barking was one of
the five. Thus, there were many expectations to our work, both from the top and from the bottom.
But things are changing in Barking and three sites in the town area were given to private developers.
They are building 10-storey apartment blocks, which ironically shadow most of that public
space they themselves are to establish. We ended up proposing two interlocking spaces; one hardscape
area in front of the town hall and one soft-scape in the shadowy area: Here, we introduced
mystery to the public realm and made the shadowy area more shadowy by constructing an urban
arboretum. The developer was anxious about the arboretum because he feared uncontrollable
public space below his private flats. It is now our images and photo collages of the arboretum that
Fig. 5
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