It’s time for architecture to make space for nature between our buildings

By planning for biodiversity in those in-between spaces, we can create happier places and help boost climate resilience.

Many of these approaches recoup time-honoured strategies of bygone eras. Letting land soak up water rather than concreting over every bit of earth. Encouraging variety in planting rather than monocultures. Seeing value in the unfinished and the imperfect.

The October issue of the AJ is out now, and in Culture there’s a lovely discussion about ‘cathedral thinking’ – starting something you’ll never see finished. ‘It sounds scary; but if you relax into that idea, it opens possibilities,’ says Vickie Hayward about the public art installations at Oxford University Development’s Begbroke Innovation District. Planting evolves over time; gardens grow and adapt.

Many of the excellent schemes showcased in this month’s AJ put biodiversity and climate resilience at their core. They’ve also made some bold moves: fewer buildings, for one. Earls Court Development Company (ECDC) has given over 60 per cent of its entire site to open spaces.

Architect Sharon Giffen, head of design at the ECDC and formerly of Foster + Partners, explains: ‘We originally had five buildings proposed around [the existing 1962] Empress State Building. We removed the corner block, allowing the [other] buildings to breathe more, make the public space more generous and, most importantly, improve the microclimate.’

The reimagining of the Gascoigne Estate is at the heart of Barking and Dagenham Council’s ambition to regenerate Barking as one of London’s greenest, most affordable and sustainable neighbourhoods. White Arkitekter has developed a landscape-led scheme and the practice benefits from having an in-house landscape team. As Fran Williams writes: ‘It has been able to work closely with its own landscape architects, initially for the placemaking strategy, so that both landscape and massing worked in tandem to combat any urban heating risk.’

When it comes to working with water, rather than fighting it, Rotterdam offers a cornucopia of inspiration with its Seven City Projects and a number of other climate-resilient schemes such as the Keilehaven Tidal Park, designed by De Urbanisten.

This occupies a former industrial dock on the banks of the Maas River, transforming it into an ecologically valuable area that is ever-changing, as parts of the park are accessible only at low tide. This results in a dynamic public space, which both enhances biodiversity and offers visitors encounters with nature.

Another scheme – the Benthemplein water square – is designed with a twofold strategy in mind: to create an attractive public space giving identity to a neighbourhood while providing storm water storage, all in one space.

When everything in our climate seems more extreme – from drenching rainstorms to baking heatwaves – one answer to this human-caused emergency lies in a long-term focus on nature. 

As De Ubanisten’s founder, Dirk van Peijpe, says, ‘immense differences’ can be made from ‘many small moves’. It’s time for architecture to give them space.