saf(h)er spaces: piccadilly gardens & reformatory
type. thesis project
stage. six
date. year-long
description. ​
Building upon my fifth-year dissertation, my sixth-year thesis project aims to investigate how spatial redesign can affect our behaviour to create gender equitable, safer public spaces within the geographical scope of Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester. Marginalised communities (including women, POC, and the LGBTQIA+ community) have had their safety compromised since before Jack the Ripper and is still a big issue today with the recent murders of Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa & Aisling Murphy; it needs to end now. Thus, my project focuses on those who are marginalised as well as the perpetrators of discomfort.
My scheme has a multi-faceted approach which is polemic in nature and has been conceived with humour. The first facet involves a redesign of the public space as an updated return to the sunken gardens. The updates lie in the focus on accessibility, clear views across site, and lighting. The second facet is installing small ‘light-touch’ Watchtowers across the site; with 24/7 operation and non-alcoholic programmes, they allow for continuous eyes-on-the-street as well as a place where refuge can be sought. The final facet is the sub-terranean reformatory to house and rehabilitate offenders of sexual harassment, assault, and other gender-based violence.
The reformatory balances a restorative justice (RJ) programme with elements of discomfort. The focus on RJ aims to maintain the humanisation of the reformees (unlike other prisons); and the discomfort element serves as an empathic tool and an incentive to want to develop themselves and leave. The RJ programme includes various forms of therapy to encourage self-reflection and development. It includes individual therapy, empathetic therapy (VR, group therapy, communication with those they affected), hobby therapy (working out, cooking, creating art and music, gardening), and faith therapy. The reformees can display and/or sell their hobby therapy efforts in the gallery, where the public are invited in. The public spaces within the reformatory are where the discomfort element starts to be introduced; the threshold between public and private are lined with glass, providing the public to watch the reformers, both in the therapy areas, and the residences below.
Other uncomfortable moments within the reformatory include the reformee entrance ramp and the custom-designed reformatory stool. Discomfort using the entrance ramp is manufactured through relatively dim lighting, narrowing space as one passes through, and being lined with expanded corten steel mesh that one would be hesitant to touch. Discomfort using the reformatory stool is created through a back-rest absence and wood offcuts that jut through jesmonite (materials that are symbolic of those used in the building itself) making for an unlevel surface to sit on.
Another allusion to the history of Piccadilly Gardens is the baptismal pool see-. See-saws and sump pits were used to enforce christian morals on ‘immoral’ women, dunking them into the waters. here, the symbol of the seesaw has been reclaimed as a therapy tool. a voluntary practice, reformees who wish to be purified in the eyes of god and (re)admitted into the church will take their place at the waters-end of the seesaw.