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Following soon after 3ºC Neighbourhood and Endowing The Future, later in the same year we published the Physical Infrastructure Design chapter in June 2024.
Building on the previous iterations of the site plans and feasibility by Architecture 00 **in May 2019 and October 2020, this chapter reflects the depth and breadth of learnings, dreams, ambitions, feedback and constraints surfaced since then, including the urgency of responding to the changing social-ecological context we find ourselves in five years on, as outlined in 3°C Neighbourhood and Endowing The Future.
This chapter was primarily focused on Neighbourhood Public Square as physical infrastructure, as we took the next practical steps of co-building the Neighbourhood Public Square openly and intentionally alongside our visionary design team, including Architecture 00 and Material Cultures.
However, at every layer we deeply acknowledge that an enabling, regenerative, distributive-by-design building is where every other aspect of our work, wider proposal, and the entanglements we reside in layer together, and cannot truly be separated. Thus, we presented the design for Neighbourhood Public Square from the ground up, and acknowledged its nested, fractal scales, embedded within physical and social ecosystems as far as possible in this document.
Neighbourhood Public Square in Ladywood, Birmingham | Illustration by Sonia Dubois
The abridged selection of the wider Physical Infrastructure Design chapter material that was shared in the open in 2024 focuses on the design principles and methodologies behind Neighbourhood Public Square, context about the site, approaches to its phasing — from land acquisition to deep retrofit and beyond — and insights into the social-ecological outcomes of key spaces.
As the next stages of architectural design continued, draft architectural plans were also made available on request to potential collaborators and investors at this time, with these later shared in the public domain as part of the first planning application for the Neighbourhood Public Square site in March 2026.
Alongside these, to go beyond a traditional and technical architectural approach alone, we put out a Neighbourhood Public Square Architectural Illustrator Commission to help us visualise various elements of the site, particularly focusing on the softer aspects of the everyday essence and spirit of each space—how it will feel, operate and be related to. This commission involved creating artist impressions that brought to life the Neighbourhood Public Square to describe what’s happening there, what we’d like to be included, along with the broader context of the square within the neighbourhood, with Sonia Dubois contributing 10 significant spatial illustrations at this time, with a further 7 created later as part of communicating the wider Land Story of the site.
Chapter on display Neighbourhood Supper Club, part of Site As A Classroom Week in June 2024.
This chapter was opened up in countless ways, big and small, from regular neighbourhood gatherings, to purpose-built design festivals and co-creation weeks. Neighbourhood Supper Clubs are one such example of this, as consistent open spaces hosted by us in the neighbourhood, making them ideal settings to talk neighbours through the detail of the building proposal as it develops, and discuss how the site can contribute to both local needs and global responsibilities.
Fundamentally, this chapter also formed the basis for the Design & Access Statement for Neighbourhood Public Square, which was submitted to Birmingham City Council as part of the initial planning application for enabling works, change of use and temporary structures on the site on 11th March 2026.
Find out more in the Planning section.
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This chapter is co-authored with Architecture00 and outlines how Neighbourhood Public Square will make 3ºC Neighbourhood and Endowing The Future tangible through co-building regenerative, distributive-by-design neighbourhood civic infrastructure at the heart of Ladywood, Birmingham, held in common with the neighbourhood for generations.
Working alongside visionary collaborators to build our design team and wider ecosystem in this demonstrator, together we are deeply committed to meeting the scale and breadth of the polycrisis, designing for future challenges and abundant possibilities ahead, including what climate predictions mean for the criticality of neighbourhood civic infrastructure.
Read the Physical Infrastructure Design chapter in full:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Et1Uk9opbbZn2slwcXFQQ_AtTLYb8EVS/view
“The trick with design principles is not to see them as if law, as if a set of un-bending, precise strictures which must be followed at all costs, or ticked off like checklists. I prefer to see them as ingredients, like the ‘staples’ that sit under the Masterchef kitchen benches: the oils, vinegars, seasoning, fats, herbs and spices that you can combine and recombine, challenged with new ingredients and contexts, to create many different kinds of dish, old and new.
These principles should provide a clear sense of direction, but they should also be broadly generative, and applicable to a variety of contexts.”
*—*Dan Hill, Working with Brian Eno on design principles for streets
As part of the Physical Infrastructure Design chapter, the following Design Principles have been developed to align and communicate the larger values, perspectives, and frameworks that underpin the collaboration of our design team, contractors, peers, neighbours and more as we establish the foundations for regenerative distributive-by-design neighbourhood civic infrastructure together.