London Festival of Architecture 2019: events celebrating London's landmarks, architectural highlights and how data is being used to shape the city

London's public spaces should be designed for multiple uses, with courtyards, homes and eateries away from the traffic. 
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Brian Girard28 June 2019

Now that our shopping habits have been converted to a quick and easy online transaction, we need other reasons to visit our high streets.

People are drawn to environments in which they can linger, so we should transform them from a simple linear route to something more diverse that incorporates multiple environments within public spaces.

The key to changing the high street is to look beyond the frontages into the back streets and yards, to create courtyards, gardens, and homes away from the traffic.

Covent Garden is a thriving mixed-use neighbourhood built on this ‘diffused’ model, where we have recently completed Floral Court – a development for the estate owner Capco.

A new public courtyard created from former car parking and backyards is discovered through passageways linking two previously disconnected streets.

Floral Court: a new public courtyard, around which sit homes and restaurants, has been created from former backyards in Covent Garden

Here people can stop and pause for a few moments in an environment that is very different from the surrounding, busy commercial streets.

Around the courtyard, the upper storeys of a Georgian terrace have been returned to residential use, with discreet entrances between shopfronts, and a contemporary new-build – the Floral Court Collection – combines ground floor restaurants with apartments above.

Enlightened land owners and local authorities can redesign their high streets on this model using bits of un-utilised space behind the high street frontages. The principles behind our work in Covent Garden could be used across the capital.

Brian Girard is a principal at architectural practice Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. Visit londonfestivalofarchitecture.org; tweet @LFArchitecture and/or @KohnPedersenFox

See our gallery above for the key events to watch out for in the final week of this year's festival.

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