"Imagining a public space is impossible without answering the question: What can you do there?"

 Project for Public Spaces

Use and Activities: One Essential Key to Cultivating Great Public Spaces

Uses and activities are a reflection of what's possible in a place and ultimately, how well it serves its community.

Whether it be through pop up events, regular programming, or permanent placemaking features (like a ping pong table!), activity is at the core and is an essential consideration when designing (or re-designing) public spaces.

According to Project for Public Spaces, the question of what activities are best isn't so critical (it's hard to go wrong). What's more essential is the diversity and density of uses and activities available. This is what they call the Power of 10+. The idea is that for a campus, urban area, or rural region to thrive there needs to be 10 great destinations, with 10 places within it, and each place needs 10 things to do. Creating clusters of activity like this means there is a constant liveliness, no matter the time of day, week, or year.

So, more is better, who would've thought?! Want more ideas? Project for Public Spaces lays out seven their principles for cultivating active and useful public spaces as part one of their four part series: "What makes a place great?"

Docklands City Park by MALA Studio

An old and run-down park corner in Docklands, Melbourne, was transformed by local landscape architecture and urban design practice, MALA Studio in 2017.

The design challenge for the MALA studio team was to connect a series of sites into a vibrant and useable destination for the Melbourne inner city area - improving one of its few open spaces.

The project - completed in two stages - was also centred around celebrating a newly placed architectural feature, the MPavilion. The MPavilion was the second in a series of commissioned civic architecture projects placed around Melbourne (there are now ten). These architectural projects provide a meeting place for community, a catalyst for discussion, and a beautiful placemaking feature.

Want to talk ping pong for your community? Email the team for a quote or with any questions regarding our range at [email protected] or call us on 0401 003 333.