Exchange Square, City of London, London – British Land with DSDHA

Exchange Square is a major new public park reimagined. The project focuses on interweaving recreational spaces with informal, open-air working spaces and retail shops, which encourages a mix of uses and activities at different times of the day for a diverse audience

Where is the project located 

Broadgate, London, EC2A 2EH

Who is the developer/client of the project?

British Land

Describe the context of this project and its neighbourhood and people?

Exchange Square is a major new public park in the heart of the City of London. Suspended above the tracks of the busy transport hub of Liverpool Street Station, it sits within Broadgate’s entirely pedestrianised public realm, the largest in Central London.

In recent years, Broadgate has turned into a large thoroughfare, with the potential to embrace major fluxes of people moving along the east-west and north-south axes (connecting Liverpool Street Station to East London’s Tech City) and be re-woven back into the surrounding city whilst offering much-needed amenity for a diverse audience.

Exchange Square is the last of this rare collection of public spaces to be reimagined by DSDHA, and the culmination of our public realm framework for British Land, for which we have already enhanced and better connected the open spaces of Broadgate Plaza, Broadgate Circle, and Finsbury Avenue Square.

Reimagined as a bucolic landscape and generously planted green space, Exchange Square establishes a new mixed-use space in the City. Blending recreational spaces with informal, open-air working facilities and retail units, the square encourages a variety of potential uses and activities at different times of day, extending the dwelling time beyond working hours and helping Broadgate become more receptive to the needs of a wider variety of people, from its local office and shop workers to the residents of neighbouring Shoreditch and Spitalfields.

Tell us what you did and how it was designed and delivered. What do you see as the greatest success of this project?

Our design purposefully slows the pace of this intensely kinetic space, offering respite from the onslaught of commuters at busy Liverpool Street Station and the noise of Bishopsgate, allowing for leisure and relaxation surrounded by nature, as well as distributing Broadgate’s patterns of occupation more evenly throughout the day and the week.

A comprehensive analysis of pedestrian movement helped to identify barriers to access – steps, changes in level, lack of visual contrast and changes in tactility, and poor signage – informing our response of unfolding the space across several levels to create a more naturalistic topography, with gently sloping routes that allow wheelchair and pushchair access across and through the whole site.

Inspired by the East Anglian estuarine landscapes to which the trains from Liverpool Street depart, the park’s pathways offer direct and winding routes past lawns and densely planted areas that bring greater biodiversity and year-round green space connectivity to the site. A cascading water feature encourages interaction and play whilst the path gradually elevates alongside Fernando Botero’s statue of Venus towards a climactic viewpoint overlooking the train tracks.

The greatest success for any DSDHA project is seeing evidence of its positive change – from diverse crowds filling the amphitheatre steps on their lunch breaks, children playing at the water feature, and hearing one local resident exclaim, who is delighted to finally have a suitable space in which she can daily exercise her schnauzer, that “coming here feels like I’m on holiday”.

How does this public space bring people together, encourage inclusivity, and make a positive environmental impact to the wider place? How is the community engaged in the project?

Research commissioned by British Land shows that putting good design at the heart of urban development can lead to substantial improvement in peoples’ mental health. Wellbeing and inclusivity have been vital considerations throughout the design process, driven by the ambition to make a vibrant space that encourages engagement and interactivity. The park provides a lush planting palette, offering seasonal variety and an ever-changing sensory experience that ensures the park will never be the same place twice. The onsite gardener encourages continual learning and growth of the site and community – offering opportunities for discussion, enquiries and involvement from the wider public whilst maintaining the square.

In addition to the exciting mix of planting and trees, the park features expansive green spaces, a water feature, amphitheatre seating and new retail and event spaces, all of which are open to everyone. The scheme seeks to address accessibility and permeability by celebrating the various gateways into the park – a new lift will overcome stepped access from the south, and improvements to the stepped terrace that fronts Bishopsgate make routes from the east more inclusive.

In providing a more attractive, less corporate environment for Broadgate, we have created a place in which people wish to dwell, not just pass through. Through new planting, seating, lighting, high-quality materials, and more opportunities for temporary uses and events, a more diverse group of people have been encouraged to use the space, breaking down perceived barriers to surrounding areas of the City.

Please share any data or figures that support your entry about how this public space or landscape intervention has made a positive social or environmental impact, for example biodiversity, increased dwell time, flood or drainage mitigation, wellness or safety or other ecosystem services.

The 1.5-acre park provides a four-fold increase in the amount of planting – 14,000 plants and over 140 different species – dramatically enhancing biodiversity, and 25% of the area features accessible green space. This increase supports British Land’s Climate Action Strategy to make the City of London net zero emissions by 2040.

Reuse and recycling of materials was a key consideration of ours, and the scheme is effectively a re-imagining of the existing structure that supports the public space over the railway tracks. The existing concrete slab is retained without modification and a thorough analysis of the loadbearing capacity of the existing slab was undertaken to identify areas that could support tree planting and increased planting build-ups to eliminate the need for any strengthening of the existing structure.

The existing square featured a substantial water feature that constantly pumped gallons of water around a closed system which not only had a substantial energy load, but limited use and accessibility of a large part of the site. Our design removed this feature and provided an alternative stream of water in the centre of the space, where water gently cascades down a series of shallow pools, using a fraction of the volume of water (and one-tenth of the energy of the previous square) and making the water a play feature. The location of the existing water tank also required significant loading capacity, which we repurposed for the provision of a new café with an accessible roof.