Beach Shack, Florida. Design and Placemaking by Bryden Wood

It’s more important than ever that we create environments and regenerate places to bring joy and support people ecologically, physically, emotionally, economically and culturally.

A People Centered Approach to Placemaking

Placemaking in architecture and urban design reflects the idea that the physical and social character of the places we live, work and play should be designed to foster a sense of community and connection. In our work in residential, healthcare, offices, aviation, and other public environments, we seek to reinvent public spaces, delivering value in sustainability, efficiency and cost, while maintaining beauty and encouraging social interaction. 

Creative Placemaking

Placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use by creating and enhancing public spaces, and can involve anything from the redesign of urban landscapes, to creative placemaking elements like the installation of public art.

Our master-planning and urbanism projects vary in scale, geography and social context. But the central focus is always improving lives and communities — at work, home and all the places in between.

A collaborative process that emphasizes the importance of community involvement, and engages local residents in the planning process, placemaking considers the needs of all users, and transforms ordinary sites into exceptional ones.

Individuals, Community Development and the Public Realm

Placemaking is both a process essential to the health and well-being of people, and to the environment. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in placemaking as a way to combat environmental degradation and promote sustainable development. It’s more important than ever that we create environments and regenerate places to bring joy and support people ecologically, physically, emotionally, economically and culturally.

When setting out to design any particular space, it's essential to consider the role that placemaking will play because places are not neutral. There is great power in placemaking. The environments we live and work in can improve community health and well-being, encourage collaboration and community engagement, facilitate celebrations and relationships, and enable us to flourish.

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Key Principles of Our Approach

Over the past 25 years we have applied our Design to Value approach to deliver some of the most innovative developments across London and the UK, and around the world. Our projects aim to integrate new buildings in existing environments, responding to local cultures. They are focused on sustainable design and respectful in their response to the needs of the existing community. Placemaking is always a priority for us.

Maximizing Local Community Assets and Adding Value

We make sure our solutions offer demonstrable benefits to those existing environments, as well as to occupiers and visitors. There is great added value in making places rather than simply designing buildings. Our approach continues to acknowledge its roots in community architecture and engineering. Our core value is to make better places for all. Better places emerge from a thorough understanding and appreciation of the local context, transport/communications infrastructure and community dynamics. We sometimes use this understanding to lead us to an inventive solution that breaks the tradition or current trend and creates a magical place.  

Placemaking and Design To Improve Lives

The places we create enhance people’s lives. They help to support and invigorate communities. They inspire. They are positive spaces where people feel happy, safe and able to reflect and concentrate; all of which is deeply influenced by the built environment that surrounds us. Great, integrated design adds significant value to the development process, helping gain support from community stakeholders and benefiting all involved. 

Placemaking With a Design to Value Approach

We use the principles of Design to Value and industrialized construction to create better places to live and work, in a wide range of settings. Our work includes sustainable design, zero carbon innovation, the creation of inviting public spaces, sensitive insertions into the Green Belt and award-winning residential architecture.

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