Meanwhile Space: What happens when design activates disused buildings?

Young Placemakers from Fitzrovia Youth in Action photographed at Reflect, co-designed with MATT+FIONA, at The National Temperance Hospital Garden by LDA Design and Mace Dragados for HS2. Photo by Nick Turpin.

’Meanwhile space’ - the temporary activation of an otherwise vacant place - is becoming a contentious issue.  Much lauded as a successful way of keeping otherwise dead community space alive, there are also those who feel it is just a sticking plaster for broken cities, keeping proper urban renewal at bay.

Curators Clare Dowdy and Helen Parton, long-time researchers and writers on the urban landscape, explore just how impactful meanwhile spaces are and showcase efforts around the world to turn unused spaces into vibrant places during periods of uncertainty or transition.

Visitors will be able to browse the history of meanwhile space, pick up a step-by-step guide on how to set up their own meanwhile space and scrutinise exemplar projects from around the world.

 

One such is Dreamtroit, a building complex in the US citiy of Detroit.  It began life as a Lincoln Motor factory and over the last 25 years has been a rave venue and then a recycling facility. It has now become affordable artists’ housing and creative workspaces.

The pandemic generated plenty of new meanwhile potential, seized by the likes of architects Rockwell Group, who created a performance project in the Meatpacking District of New York City.  Empty shops were converted into theatre space, each unit becoming the stage for one of a series of ten-minute plays based on the Seven Deadly Sins.

Further afield, the ward of a former hospital in New South Wales, Australia – part of the Randwick Health and Innovation Precinct - had become storage space for equipment. Working with the Precinct’s Innovation and Placemaking team (led by Sophie Forbat and Stephen Palmer), Dr Cathy Smith, senior lecturer at UNSW’s School of Built Environment along with colleagues Professor Philip Oldfield and James Hargrave are modelling its conversion it into a home for tech start-ups and creatives - hoping that their collaboration will foster innovation. The team’s idea is that The Randwick Ward acts as a template for upcycling and fitting out decanted hospital wards, turning them into sustainable meanwhile use environments.

Clare Dowdy says:

“We find ourselves in an odd dynamic where many arts and cultural organisations lack the funding to stage exhibitions and community events and yet, at the same time, we see great gaps in our high streets, with everything from shops to offices, travel agents, pubs and post offices closing. That’s bad for people and landlords, as well as for architects and interior designers.  

“An opportunity exists, however, to bring culture and empty spaces together. This benefits landlords, as the space is occupied and their business rates are reduced; it benefits designers and architects, as they are commissioned to convert disused buildings into temporary creative spaces; it benefits the artists and other groups, who can create site-specific work without having to worry about commercial success; and it benefits the locals, as their high street becomes more vibrant and they get a dose of culture. Just what the doctor ordered!”

 

Helen Parton says:

“It is this raft of benefits that urged us to research the Meanwhile Space topic further and unearth an inspiring mix of projects from around the world. We thought it was important not only to show the breadth of projects in terms of design visuals, but also to look at the financial models, administrative processes and stakeholder engagement that’s essential to make meanwhile meaningful and worthwhile.”

The curators are collaborating with exhibition designers Steve Jensen and Devan Skuban, who have recruited a team of interior design students at the RCA. They are working with reclaimed materials to build the show’s rough-and-ready, meanwhile use aesthetic.  Alongside the meanwhile space projects amassed by the curators will sit artefacts from an RCA project entitled (A)mend, which is exhibited at this year’s Milan Design Week. As its title suggests, each (A)mend artefact proposes the repurposing of an existing piece, echoing the theme of the entire exhibition.  This neat layering - a ‘show within a show’, in effect - will allow visitors to experience the spirit of meanwhile in multiple dimensions.

Experts and practitioners in the meanwhile space field will go into the subject in more depth through an event series that will run during the exhibition.

 

Exhibition team:

Co-curators:

Clare Dowdy 

Clare is a writer, editor and event moderator. For more than 30 years, she has focused on design, architecture and branding. Currently senior writer at the recently relaunched Design Week, she has written for Wallpaper, The Financial Times, Monocle, BBC.com and others. In 2022, she curated an exhibition on the architecture of data centres at Roca Gallery. Clare wrote 50 company profiles for the book Made In London: from workshops to factories (Merrell, 2022).

Helen Parton

Helen Parton is an architecture and interiors journalist with over 20 years’ experience. She edited workplace design magazine OnOffice for three years from 2015-2018, garnering the title multiple award nominations in national journalism awards.  In 2011, she co-authored a book by Thames and Hudson called Total Office Design. She edited the 2021 and 2022 editions of the Journal of the London Society. In 2014, she curated a London Design Festival exhibition entitled Generation Design which looked at mid-career creative journeys. She is currently a freelance editorial consultant, with projects including a book on neurodiversity and the built environment. 

Exhibition design team:

Steve Jensen

Steve Jensen is a designer and academic who has operated between the boundaries of art and architecture for nearly twenty-five years. A balance of professional practice and education has created a unique body of work that has enabled him to formulate a strong design identity and educational aptitude. His past companies Juggernaut Design and Anarchitect, were both critically acclaimed and award winning, including Retail Design of the Year and ICA/Toshiba Arts Innovation Award.

Devan Skuban

Devan Skuban is a Canadian interior designer. His passion to push himself and his practice to the edges of the discipline, a bold collaborative enthusiasm which is clear in his ability to bring together cross-disciplinary teams (artists, designers, musicians, urban planners and curators) to explore and design new relationships between real places and live experiences. His passion is underpinned by significant skills across a multitude of disciplines, this ability as ‘conductor’ and ‘integrator’ being critical to his practice.