Ruskin Square

Ruskin Square is the latest element of new public realm  for a formally derelict site. The area is undergoing a major programme of regeneration to create a new urban quarter with improved transport links, residential, retail and office space and an investment in public realm, built ahead of development. Two out of eight buildings have been completed to-date.

‘Ruskin Square’ lies at the heart of the new quarter; a public space built for the development but deliberately designed to create a place of respite for a neighbourhood with little green space. We worked to persuade the developer to embrace the wider neighbourhood beyond the office workers and make this self – evident, through invitations to linger – whether child sized benches, many places to sit, a lion to sit on hidden within the planting or the drinking fountain that makes it clear you do not have to spend money to spend time here. A commissioned sculpture ‘Every Increased Possession Loads Us with New Weariness’ reinforces the connection to the landscape origins of the buildings themselves by describing their supply chains.

At the centre of the square is an oval timber stage, lined with seating, surrounded by a grove of Pin Oak trees and a verdant understorey of grasses, ferns and specimen shrubs. The form evokes the oval timber panelled drawing room in the Working Men’s College where John Ruskin, the development’s namesake, taught drawing classes (drawing classes are programmed here). This is a permanent landscape in advance of future plots being built and the temporary boundary hoardings are planted mesh, with hydroseeded fields of lupins and ox-eye daisy as an interim landscape setting that can be seen beyond.

The landscape has been designed to be resilient to climate change by optimising sustainable drainage and to cool the urban environment with the significant biomass of the large species trees and understorey planting. The apertures of sunken planting attenuate rainfall and surface water run-off, connecting to an extensive below ground ‘rooting zone’ of soil cell crates. These crates extend beneath the paving to provide each tree in the square with around 25m³ of linked soil volume, creating a below ground growing environment in this hard, urban setting to allow the trees to thrive and mature over the long-term. The understorey of grasses, ferns and specimen shrubs, with a ‘secret’ forest of transplants, keep the soil cool while enhancing biodiversity and seasonal dynamics. The granite paving is a flexible, permeable grit jointing construction to attenuate and slow surface water run-off.  This surface water, along with roof run-off, is captured in a large attenuation tank located below the ‘rooting zone’.

A single, mature horse chestnut, a remnant of the 1970’s landscape, was carefully retained, with its low, wide canopy creating a welcoming feature of the space. Found to be planted into a concrete ring restricting its growth, the tree has been nursed back to health by releasing it from construction and improving the surrounding soil conditions. Pre-development the tree was suffering from downy mildew, however following the improvements to its growing environment and the introduction of understorey planting to hold soils open, the mildew has not shown signs of returning. A survivor of previous cycles of development, the tree is symbolic of the resilience and longevity of urban forestry. We explored this pre-existing landscape with the artist led ‘Festival of Toil’ with a group of young people, who dug clay to make a pizza oven and goblets and then cooked for the client and local politicians to mark the sites’ return to use.

This is set within a wider strategy of incrementally bringing nature to the city, alongside adjacent initiatives, in particular an award-winning bioretention pavement park that replaced asphalt paving in front of Ruskin Square multi-storey car park. Here again existing trees were retained and underplanted with a variety of sedges, hardy perennials and shrubs with a dished soil profile to attenuate surface water run-off. Grit jointed permeable paving contributes to surface water attenuation and directs excess run-off into the planted areas through ‘broken’ kerbs.