Design Solution · Interior & Wellbeing
Design Solution · Dream about it
Turning a disused courtyard into an arrival forecourt.
A new 'square within a square' forecourt is created by removing a little-used courtyard between the Sainsbury Wing and the Wilkins Building. Reclaiming dead space turns it into active public realm that improves arrival and orientation. It links the two gallery buildings more clearly.
Reclaiming a little-used internal courtyard between two gallery buildings and converting it into a public forecourt is a placemaking intervention that turns passive dead space into active arrival infrastructure. The concept is simple and coherent: a space that was generating no public value is redesigned to improve orientation, arrival quality and the legible connection between two buildings that had operated as separate destinations. The evidence is self-reported and no post-occupancy visitor flow data, dwell counts or wayfinding improvement metrics are cited, so the public realm benefits are asserted on design intent. For a specifier, the more interesting question is what the planning and heritage consent path looked like: inserting a new civic space between two listed or historically sensitive buildings is rarely straightforward, and the planning argument — that removing an underused internal space improves the public realm — is the transferable lesson here. The risk is that forecourts between major institutions can generate activation problems of their own; without programming, management and natural surveillance, a 'square within a square' can become underused for different reasons than the courtyard it replaced.
#public realm #placemaking #reuse