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T
here is little doubt that leisure is the number one
topic on everyone’s lips when it comes to meanwhile
uses; whether it be SecretCinema taking over the former
printing press in British Land’s Canada Water development
(a use that delivered one of the highest grossing ‘cinemas’
of the first half of 2015, which is impressive given its one
screen and 30-year old film) or BoxPark Croydon which
has firmly jettisoned Croydon back into the big-league of
London locations. To create a successful place you need
activity, energy and most importantly soul.
In new developments meanwhile leisure uses are
increasingly becoming the best medium of creating that
soul. Landlords and developers need to identify both
the local heritage of the area, but also the future target
stakeholders of a location before choosing their use.
BoxPark Croydon is an excellent example; Croydon was
completely devoid of any food culture and BoxPark’s
significant expansion from their first iteration in Shoreditch
has been an overwhelming success at first glance. The
combination of food, music, cultural exhibitions and events
such as FightKlub fitness has created a sense of place in a
long forgotten corner of London.
Further afield, some have looked to PaperIsland
(Papirøen) in Copenhagen as a blueprint for meanwhile
uses; the whole area is a long term redevelopment site and
the occupiers only having term certain until 2017; while the
anchor is again food with the Copenhagen Street Food
market, other creative industries such as Danish designer
Henrik Vibskov have settled adjacent to start to build the
sense of place.
These uses are not always easy to deliver: challenging
planning laws, costs of development with limited
potential financial return, lack of long-term security for
the operators and often quirky space at the very earliest
stages of development mean the only way to integrate
these uses successfully is via a truly collaborative approach
between occupier, landlord and the local authorities. If
this approach is successful we will only see more and
more meanwhile leisure popping up across London’s
regeneration schemes.
Meanwhile...
a Leisurely Use
By Thomas Rose,
Partner,
Head of Leisure & Restaurants
Apple’s headquarters in London’s Battersea Power Station
‘c’, can help attract businesses and
people to our cities, cluster creative
industries inside cultural districts,
offer fine grain ideas for creative
neighbourhoods and reinvent
the purpose of contemporary
‘downtowns’. The time of the Cultural
City is upon us and yet ‘culture’ is
still frustratingly peripheral to our
urban planning process. The top-
down model persists: a pyramid
model, with the developer and
architect at the top offering both
‘vision and solution’. But the pyramid
needs to be upturned, with vision,
narrative, content, placemaking
and community providing a trickle
down narrative to those whose job
it is to design and deliver our urban
centres. I would call this ‘Cultural
Masterplanning’ and push for a
‘software over hardware’ approach
to planning and development.
However, it’s not just about the
property sector. Sixty years of public
funding for the arts has had an
unfortunate side effect. It has made
the arts focus on their survival through
government and agency funding and
endless grant applications. To make
matters worse, sponsorship, European
and Lottery funding are diminishing or
being spread too thin. The sector has
created its own language, structure
and reward. The arts yearn for the tax
breaks and big bucks philanthropy
of the US but seem blind to the
opportunities on its doorstep.
In a world where the interchange
of disciplines is becoming the norm
and a media-savvy public use social
media as a tool to circumvent more
traditional means of information
and persuasion, new disciplines and
approaches are needed, cities are
now ‘factories for ideas’, IP rules and
place is both King and Queen, ‘long
live the Cultural City’.
CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD
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