Mapping Haberdasher's Awkward Space

On the 21st March 2010, members of the Haberdasher Estate in East London were invited to participate in a collective mapping session. The haberdasher residents were joined by a small group of designers who helped to facilitate and document an exploration of the estate's 'awkward spaces'. This workshop was facilitated by Hannah Jones as part of her PhD research into awkward space in the city. Hannah was testing part of her PhD methodology which focuses on bottom-up approaches to re-imagining the multi-potential of awkward space in the city. The workshop also provided an opportunity for the Metabolicity design team to reconnect with the Haberdasher growing group to reflect on the next stages of food growing activities on the estate.

The Haberdasher residents, who were key participants in the Metabolicity project, re-envisioned awkward spaces as hot spots for localized food production, sports areas for children on the estate, art installation spaces, space for alternative energy production and space for a community centre. After identifying, exploring and re-imagining the estate's wealth of disused space in a vibrant map, the participants then focused on what kind of budget would be needed to eventualize each space, what kind of time frame each space would take to develop and how possible, from awkward to easy each space would be to transform.

This design process will be further tested in future projects as a way to kick start collaborative, creative, bottom-up action in the city and as a precursor to making design interventions in public space.