DSDHA has overhauled a tired public square by Liverpool Street Station, adding meandering paths and cascading water features in an effort to recreate a peaceful piece of Essex in central London.
From Liverpool Street Station, the estuarine waterways of Essex are roughly one-and-a-half hours away by train. They are also, if you use your imagination, roughly one-and-a-half minutes away by foot – found in the recently revamped Exchange Square.
Designed by London-based studio DSDHA to the tune of £18 million for the developer British Land, the poorly ageing public space that links the SOM-designed Exchange House to Liverpool Street Station has been transformed into an accessible square that serves as a thoroughfare and as a place for relaxation.
“It’s a conversation between SOM of the ‘80s, DSDHA now and the Victorian era,” Deborah Saunt, the “DS” of DSDHA, told Architecture Today. Indeed, the new park does well to mediate the heavy duty tectonics of Gordon Bunshaft and engineer Edward Wilson’s wrought-iron train shed from 1990 and 1875 respectively. To achieve this, the amount of green space in the area has increased four-fold and the red stepped paving has been been replaced by French limestone from Comblanchien – drawing on nearby squares from Dijon and Place de la Halle – to create a brighter, more accessible public arena with fewer steps.
Immediately below the limestone paving is three to four metres of soil. “Before there were just tree pits and hard surface,” says Saunt. “But we know now trees like to talk to each other, so we created this understory and, horticulturally, it’s a more sophisticated network.”
The rigid orthogonality of the previous square has also gone. In its place, meandering walkways, terrazzo seating, and a plaza-cum-mini amphitheatre that, with the aid of mist emitted through nozzles and a cascading water feature, emulates Essex’s watery landscapes.
This sense of movement is apt for somewhere that connects to a station. Yet, this is a place for both stasis and flow. During commuting hours, workers can cut through the space efficiently. Erected during the pandemic, the space also has ample seating and is already being used for more leisurely activities, becoming a place for tai chi yoga, dates and dog walking.
Movement map: existing routes through the space highlighted in blue; new routes plotted by DSDHA in red.
The space can also be used for events, too. Turning the site from a place dominated by stepped paving into a more sloping surface, not only facilitates wheelchair access, but also food trucks and the like, allowing the space to be programmed as and when necessary. Furthermore, on the eastern side of the square, is a café to-be, which gently snakes around into the site.
When entering from Primrose Street to the north, it’s easy to forget you are suspended ten metres above the railway tracks. The train shed is still very much visible — in fact, a raised plinth above the cafe is excellent for trainspotting — though extensive planting (14,000 plants and comprising more than 140 species) courtesy of FFLO landscapes and the water feature, foster a softer connection to the natural environment rather than to hard infrastructure.
James Fox of FFLO Landscapes and Deborah Saunt joined Architecture Today editor Isabel Allen for a podcast dedicated to Exchange Square as part of our Habitat Matters series. They discussed the the value of creating a natural haven in a highly corporate world and the futility of trying to predict the way wildlife behaves and landscapes evolve.
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