This project investigates the ways transnationality and spatial histories foster a meaning making process, which engages with the remembered atmosphere of sites. The approach caters to a temporal sensitivity, allowing for the breath of community to utilise the space in creating memories, finding new paths to move through, and experiencing the space with reclaimed authority.

Based in Camberwell, Southwark lies the now-defunct Camberwell Police Station, one of four police stations which are defunct and listed for sale by the borough council. Drawing from the historic positionality of the site, the proposed intervention is a courtyard situated in the space behind the police station.

Weaving the invisible matter of felt atmospheres with the logics of a design that centres community, the project notably draws from Jane Jacobs’ ideas and configurations of effective and meaningful public space. Utilising this framework the project situates itself at the edge of multiple conditionalities in the public’s mind. How can design shift the perception and atmosphere surrounding the former police station in a meaningful way that does not enact a different kind of violence onto the residents?