Designing for legacy: “Place is not something that's delivered at completion, it's already there”

“One of the saddest things are empty buildings which could be used for so many different purposes especially by people in the local community who just were not engaged at the offset. From a social value perspective, the impact that could be gained from that [building] is then lost,” reflected Ankrah.

Matthew Sampson, Development Director (Science & Innovation) at The Crown Estate, shared ideas about how to make the most of ground-floor opportunities: “Taking a punt on a complete startup – is it worth it? We’ve got examples [where] a little meanwhile start-up taking temporary space in our portfolio [is now] a really successful award-winning permanent space. It took someone on the investment committee to say ‘Ok, we’ll take a punt on that’.”

“Meanwhile is not two years,” Bose added. “It’s 10 years, because that’s how long it takes for an organisation that doesn’t necessarily have the capacity, the funds, the revenue to take on a lease and build something to grow... Also that fits with the time scale of regeneration delivery.”

Delivering social value and putting energy into partnerships, collaboration and engagement requires a shift in mindset, Ankrah believes. “You have to look at social value being an investment, not a cost,” says Ankrah. “If you look at it as a cost, you’re going to have a reductive mindset.”

Joanna Conceicao, Director of Sustainable Design at Savills. explains how the mindset shift might work in practice – for example, instead of asking ’what is the cost of embedding sustainability’, the question is ’what’s the cost of not embedding sustainability’. 

In the case of sustainability, the risk of doing nothing becomes clear: “You will have to go back to planning or even worse, retrofit after it’s built or deal with overheating and rising energy costs,” said Conceicao.

As for legacy, Sampson urged the audience to “Allow space for messiness and evolution. Don’t overly curate it and design it, acknowledge you don’t know everything and there are areas that will evolve and the community will make that space what it needs to be.”

Dhume agreed, adding: “A place becomes a place when developers, designers ultimately just give it back to the local communities or the stewards of the place.”

“Place is all about meaning… When we wake up in the morning and decide I’m going to go to this place today, that’s an emotional decision,” says Bose. 

As much as we should learn from things that are already working, Sampson warned about the downfalls of copy/paste developments and ideas: “It’s not authentic. It’s not relevant. Sometimes it’s not replicable in that way. You’ve got to do it with the local community.”  

The final takeaway is that place legacy can’t be measured on the project time scale, it begins before engagement and extends far beyond completion. 

Find out more: Watch back the Festival of Place session — Designing for Legacy: Collaboration, density and stewardship in placemaking — from 10 June at Boxpark Wembley.

View the presentation slides

Speakers: Vinita Dhume, Director, Urban Design, Savills; Joanna Conceicao, Director, Sustainable Design, Savills; Matthew Sampson, Development Director (Science & Innovation),The Crown Estate; Rumi Bose, Director, Rumi Bose Ltd

Chair: Wesley Ankrah, Director, Social Value, Savills