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muf have expertise in urban and landscape design that recognizes and values the specific cultural identity of a place. Initial research establishes mechanisms able to include the voices of the wider client constituency in the design process. This research informs spatial arrangements and material resolutions that create captivating spaces able to allow for more than one thing at a time. Embedded within the design process and scheme resolution are strategies to engender a sense of ownership in order to ensure the longevity and care of the scheme. |
Barking Town Square Barking Town Centre is part of the Mayor's 100 public spaces programme. The public realm design makes a coherent new space for the town square where the town hall, library, a faculty of the University of East London, the one-stop-shop, a child and primary health care centre, approximately 500 new homes, retail, cafes and a major public art commission all come together. The public art element provides the fourth elevation to the wall, conceived and developed and implemented by muf, this 7 metre high folly recreates a fragment of the imaginary lost past of Barking. The project involved a number of diverse groups in its detail design, this included students from the Theatre School, elders from the Afro-Carribean lunch club and apprentices from the local bricklayers college. |
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Seabrook Rise A playground centred around a patterned play surface with a range of play equipment for varying age groups. The ground is shaped to enhance existing contours with play equipment exploiting the changes of level. Planting and seating is provided for older people with a sheltered, lit seating area in the corner for teenagers. The initial brief was developed with tenants representatives. muf then went on to identify opportunities for external funding with the client and make a successful funding bid. We then attended regular meeting with tenants including some convened to meet with young people on the estate. Young people are documenting the progress of the building works as part of a photography competition. |
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Memorial MUGA A multi-use games area for Memorial Park that follows the principles of muf's Social Cage: ie. expanding the functionality of the traditional MUGA into a social space. The games area is made up of a sculpted surface that joins and separates a designated games area with a more loosely defined space for informal play and sitting. The design for this MUGA was based on a series of workshops held with pupils in a nearby school. |
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Falcon Road Bridge, Clapham, London SW11 A scheme to improve the environment of the Falcon Road Bridge to enhance perceptions of safety and to create a distinctive urban identity is being implemented over the coming year. Base line improvements to the highway lighting and pavement are augmented by a scheme that uses colour, light and patterning. The bridge parapets will be painted and the embankments planted, three sections of the bridge soffit will be painted and lit to create diffused pools of coloured light and the tunnel walls will be cleaned to create a distinctive decorative pattern. The pattern design was developed through a series of participatory workshops with groups and individuals from the local community. |
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Mounding over the Greenway muf authored the West Ham and Plaistow NDC urban design framework that advocates, as a key principle increased mobility across the barriers to north/south movement. muf identified step-free access over the northern outfall sewer as a pivotal means to connect neighbourhoods. This project is now commissioned and in development. The scheme creates ramped access over the 6 metre high northern outfall sewer to create an informal amphitheatre to the Memorial Recreation Ground. The scheme incorporates pedestrian and cycling routes, seating lighting and planting. |
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Whitecross Street Market and Open Spaces Strategy muf - working with Arup - was commissioned to propose improvements to Whitecross Street market and the immediate surrounding area. Through ongoing dialogue with traders and residents muf made proposals for a 1.8 metre strip of granite to run the entire length of the street along the market's historic kerb line. The strip demarcates the licensed area for trade accommodating the practices of existing stall holders but also allows for the transition of the market and its uses within the flexible space of the strip. |
The Newham Roof: or the Social Cage The social cage is a roofed sports area in Major Road, Stratford that transforms the single-use cage with the addition of discrete design elements: with seating, community notice boards, special lighting and a roof for year-round shelter the cage becomes a sociable cage allowing for multiple occupations of space. |
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My Dream Today: Your Dream Tomorrow
A landscape project developed with the residents of a housing estate in Tilbury to develop a community garden. The garden acknowledges and makes space for the diverse and contradictory demands made on limited space. The design ensures both security and pleasure through an undulating landscape of shared and discrete spaces to accommodate horse riding, the under fives, robust play and sitting in the sun. The edges of the park are secured against car, bike and pony joy riding with barriers of planted gabions and other structures in order to avoid a language of fenced enclosure. |
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Camden Arts Centre Garden muf worked in collaboration with the client and the architect Tony Fretton Architects to develop the brief for the refurbishment of the arts centre and to establish two discrete works authored by muf: one a temporary treatment to the site hoarding and the other the creation of a landscaped terrace in the garden that enables access to an experience of the feral and ruined qualities of the garden.
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 The Beach at the end of the Line, Portpatrick
A scheme to renovate the derelict edge of the harbour creates a shared space of repose and play. The intrinsic order of the cliffs, rocks and sea are intersected by the scheme geometry, laid out in grass, paving and play equipment, to reveal the give and take between natural forces and an ambition for an imposed control by the human inhabitants. |
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  Pleasure Garden of the Utilities
Bespoke street furniture made in collaboration with the fireclay team from the local Armitage Shanks factory. The ceramics make visible and celebrate the culture of the potteries, where the hands of the person you sit next to on the bus, are the hands that made the plate from which you eat your dinner. The scheme brings to the public street a scale of domestic intimacy and delicate detail. |
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Shared Ground Southwark
A pilot scheme for 1 kilometer of street in South London. The principle of the scheme makes shared ground between public and private interests. Consultation with local residents, retailers, developers and businesses established the brief for a scheme that realigns the road to shift the priority from the car to the pedestrian and widen the pavement on the sunny side of the street. The pavement is constructed in cast in situ aggregate using Thames shingle to give a site-specific resonance to the scheme.
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