Project overviews
bridge

RUDI's project overview section will feature individual project data supported by a short description including facts, images, plans and drawings. Projects may be of any type: streets, housing estates, parks, squares, walkways, waterfronts – any part of the built environment in any part of the world as long as it references points of interest.

Click here for a 'quick link' to an alphabetical listing, by place name, of project overviews.

We welcome submissions for this section, please contact RUDI for details.

From asphalt to active space

Diamond Architects, in collaboration with Public Works, an art/architecture collective, undertook a series of workshops with the residents of Braithwaite House, a 19-storey residential tower block part of the 1960s Banner Estate in north-east London. The aim was to develop a brief for the creation of a welcoming new piece of shared public outdoor space, formerly a bare expanse of asphalt.

The scheme’s modest budget (just over £150,000) plus complex logistics including the loading issues of the podium’s concrete deck, has led to a design focused on a series of interventions and surface treatments. By introducing pieces of furniture, games, planting and surface treatments, the project has created areas for activity, play and interaction, as well as a space for contemplation.

Reclaiming the streets: a public urban lounge on a NYC street grew out of social media planning

By Diana Balmori

How do you reclaim the city’s streets for pedestrian use in a way that is flexible, inexpensive and contextually appropriate to the site in question? Balmori Associates has wrestled with these issues since being asked, by New York City’s Meatpacking District Initiative, to create a temporary solution for the public space of Gansevoort Plaza in the busy Meatpacking District (MPD).

The NYC Dept of Transportation continues to re-imagine traffic throughout the city; employing a system of bike paths, street closings and new traffic alignments to create public space and make traffic safer and more efficient. The task was to imagine the public spaces created by the new traffic alignments, and design a language of street furniture and planting that helped to define the space. Before beginning to develop our design principles, the design team first had to ask, what should a public place be?

Leith Docks waterfront regeneration

Leith Docks waterfront regeneration

Outline planning permission has ben given for a controversial development framework for Leith Docks, the largest planning application in Edinburgh's history. The framework, designed by RMJM for Forth Ports, will regenerate the area as part of the city's long term vision to transform Edinburgh's waterfront into a vibrant sustainable community and an internationally renowned leisure destination

Hastings: education and heritage-led regeneration

De La Warr pavilion

Education is regarded as one key element in a major programme of regeneration which has the aim of reviving the economy of the seaside town of Hastings, East Sussex, along with its neighbour Bexhill. A new style 'multi-versity' now has over 700 students, while a new further education college is under construction

LIfE project (long-term initiatives for flood risk environment)

LIfE project (long-term initiatives for flood risk environment)

Many new homes are planned in areas of flood risk, especially those in the Thames Gateway. Every new development exacerbates long-term problems of flood risk and water shortage. LIfE (long-term initiatives for flood risk environment) provides integrated master-planning, architecture and environmental solutions to areas at risk.

Barking Central

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Barking Central is designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, originally for Urban Catalyst - now for Redrow, to create 200 homes and a lifelong learning centre on the site of an original library. The project sits adjacent to the existing town hall and includes the creation of a new civic square

New Cross Gate, London

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Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects won the competition to design a sustainable living quarter in London's New Cross Gate in February 2006. The New Deal for Communities New Cross Gate sponsored the design competition based on a brief to provide health, educational, community, creative and performing arts facilities together with a new public square and residential units. The project is one of the Mayor's 100 Public Spaces Programme

Urban design: A developmental approach from RMJM

Nathan Ward article2

The role of urban designers is to establish a framework that will support the opportunities for future vitality within new or existing urban environments. Urban designers synthesise the social, environmental, and economic factors that form the basis of our cultural identity, in-order to provide vibrant and sustainable urban environments

Nathan Ward of RMJM outlines his approach to developing a sense of place




The Old Street Promenade of Light, London

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The stretch of pavement between Old Street roundabout and Bath Street is now known as the Old Street Promenade of Light. It is an award winning public space that offers a tree-lined, illuminated pedestrian promenade that can be enjoyed by everyone

St Pauls, Bristol

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Bristol's tallest-ever building, an environmentally-friendly 40-storey tower development, could become the spectacular symbol of urban regeneration in the St Paul’s area of the city under new proposals being drawn up by RPS.