Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester

Piccadilly Gardens is situated in Manchester city centre at the end of Market Street and close to Piccadilly Rail Station. It is the cities largest open inner city green space. The park, once Victorian Gardens, became neglected and a key site of anti social behaviour. The square was redesigneed in 2001 by EDAW after the IRA bombings and as part of the build up to the city hosting the Commonwealth Games. The park includes a large lawn area, and fountain plaza with the original statues and a reacreational pavillion designed by Japanese architect Tado Ando whose work I really love.

Go to www.360spin.co.uk/virtual-manchester/pic-garden.htm for 360 degree panoramics of Piccadilly Gardens, Exchange Square and the Urbis.

Albert Dock, Liverpool

The Albert Dock was once the base for the East India and China Trades, consisting of five blocks of warehouses grade 1 listed buildings surrounding a body of water larger than Trafalgar Square. The docks closed in 1792 after decades of disuse and in 1983 it became the site of a £100 million regeneration project. The new development was fully completed in 2003, transformed into a vibrant waterfront with reastaurants, bars, shops and apartments. It has become the site of Merseyside Maritime Museum and Tate Liverpool, attracting millions of visitors every year.

Church Ruins, Liverpool

The church was built in 1831, situated in Liverpool town centre. It suffered serious bomb damage during the Blitz of May 1941. The church was purchased by the city from the Church of England in 1868 and together with the gardens which surround it, it has become a public space. The eerie church ruins are covered with vines and the whole area is very tranquil and restful.

LSEA Visit To Beavers Community Primary School

Children's sustainable transport to school posters

Today I volunteered at Beaver's Community Primary School in Hounslow. It was a really exhausting day but very rewarding! I worked with small groups of children talking to them about environmentally friendly ways of travelling to school, promoting the benefits of walking/cycling and ways to keep safe. The school is already very active in promoting sustainability and discourages parents to take their children to school by car by organising cycling groups in the morning and WOW - walk on Wednesdays. I helped the children to create posters to put up around their school to encourage more children to use these facilities and explain the benefits. In the afternoon I helped the children calculate the carbon footprint of the school, which was quite horrifying! The school is well above the average when compared to other schools and I explained simple ways to reduce this. I hope to visit the school again in July to create a whole school travel tree, where each child puts a different coloured leave onto the tree in the morning relating to the way they travelled that day. I look foreard to seeing th schools progress.

Whitelaw + Turkington, London

Peninsula Square, Greenwich

After seeng a lecture on public realm by Lindsay Whitelaw at Cityscape I arranged a visit to Whitelaw + Turkington. Everybody was really welcoming and showed me a huge variety of projects which they are currently working on including masterplanning, parks and open space and urban design mainly for commercial and residential areas. One of the largest projects they are working on is Peninsula Square in Greenwich which will be the gateway to te O2. The square will be surroundedby shops, restaurants and cafes with an outdoor performance area and bold paving in concentric patterns. This will create a new public space for London, equivalent in size to Leicester Square. I really liked the diversity of types and scale of work they undertake. I was a bit daunted by how much technical drawing is done for each project!

For more information visit www.wtlandscape.com

Making Places from Spaces

I attended the Making Places from Spaces morning conference at Cityscape. One of my favourite speakers was Jason Prior, Vice President of EDAW, who spoke about masterplanning in the Lea Valley. He spoke about the strategy for after the Olympic Games and showed some fantastic images of how Lea Valley will be transformed and integrated back into London. Patricia Brown from the Central London Partnership talked about creating places where people want to be. She spoke about reclaiming back London for the people by improving transport, walkability, connections etc. Professor Robert Bruegmann from the University of Illinois at Chicargo spoke about the history of sprawl and how it can be economically, socially, environmnetally and aesthetically problematic.

Designing For Public Spaces: Improving The Public Realm Through Design

This was a brilliant lecture by Lindsay Whitelaw, Whitelaw + Turkington. She spoke about a new project in Greenwich, Penninsula Square which will accomodate huge amounts of visitors whilst at the same time providing flood control for the Thames by allowing inundation during high water levels. This will be a key site I can look at in my dissertation. Other projects included St. Pauls Green and Gillet Square in Dalston mentioned in 100 public spaces, NLA.