In 2008 we were commissioned by the London Borough of Southwark and the Friends of Mint Street Park to assist them with a funding application for the My Place initiative, run by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
We organised an extensive grass roots consultation with the users of the park, the adventure play ground and the existing dilapidated Youth Club building. This consultation produced a brief for the redevelopment of the play area.
One of the most taxing constraints was that there was a clear consensus that there should be minimal loss of open space.
Our design ideas proposed a playful building much of which was buried underground. The submission to My Place was commended by the Government department and we were short listed with a handful of other UK wide projects and invited to join the second stage.
Sadly a change of political complexion at the local authority meant that they weren’t prepared to back the Friends of Mint Street and put them in funds to allow us to work up the initial design ideas into a scheme. Ten years later a very different sort of building is being constructed on the site by the Council, much to the consternation of the local community.
