Rehabilitate Urban Realm • Providence Place Gardens, Brighton UK
Luis Trevino Architects, working collaboratively on the ‘Common Room’ with Plan Projects, won the Lively Cities (LiCi) competition in Brighton. The ‘Common Room’ will deliver a series of environmental changes, some dramatic, others small in scale, designed to harness the city’s digital and creative resources and effect the transformation called for in the competition brief. During the pilot, Providence Place Gardens itself will feel like a different place at different times of day - at times calm and tranquil, at other times alive with movement and activity. ‘Common Room’ will prompt social interaction as well as play and work related activity, thus facilitating the ‘social’ and ‘optional’ uses so important for the public realm to thrive.
The project area sits in one of the most deprived areas of Brighton and has been unable to tap into the progressive and positive aspects of the local economy due to poor planning of space and facilities. A key economic strength lies in the city’s digital sector. By installing state of the art digital infrastructure, Plan Projects’ proposal uses this as a means of reconnecting the area with the neighbourhood and knitting it back into city life.
‘Common Room’ seeks to respond to community needs by preserving the valued aspects of the site, such as its peace and tranquillity, but also putting in place key facilities and infrastructure such as public seating. The principle of ‘co-production’ is fundamental to our approach and we will be working with a specially constituted group called the Providence Place Forum to deliver the pilot. Have a look at Lively Cities work in progress with Alan Buck Senior Planning Officer of Brighton & Hove City Council.