World Squares

Location: Westminster
Client: Westminster City Council
Value: £50 million Competition: Invited Competition 1999, Highly Commended - Placed 2nd

The World Squares scheme is an initiative to realise the full potential of Trafalgar Square. Its aim is to create a new focus for London which places more importance on the movement of people than it does the movement of traffic, and creates across London, a series of connected, legible, landscaped pedestrian routes and places.

The design studies illustrated have been developed from an appreciation of the key role of St. Martin’s Place plays within Trafalgar Square. St Martin’s Place is the forecourt to the National Portrait Gallery, St Martin in the Fields and has the Edith Cavell statue as its centrepiece. It can be conceived also as the ante room the main Square and an important civic space in its own right.

Our approach recognises these issues and develops these to propose a clearly defined contemporary place to serve the public needs of the present and maintain these for future generations.

In order to examine the full potential for the urban design, these ideas have been developed directly in conjunction with the traffic and transport design strategy to prepare a fully integrated design approach.

BPR led the design team in the consortium headed by Terry Farrell and Partners for this project.