Occupying the Ropewalks: Reintroducing Community Within Vacant Spaces

The abundance of vacant buildings and land in the Ropewalks area has been the focus for many developers over the past 20 years, but their disregard for existing communities within the area has led to many artistic and cultural communities to vacate, failing the vision for the area that has been laid out in numerous planning strategies for the city.

Using Henry Street at a test site, this thesis explores how interventions with a temporary 5-year planning permission strategy can provide spaces for experimental architecture and vacant sites being taken over by their local communities to create vibrant spaces which address local necessities and enhancing the cultural identity of the area. This concept of self-help architecture can provide a template for how future planning strategies are implemented throughout the city of Liverpool to tackle it vacant spaces and how a temporary 5-year scheme can help establish identity within an area and offer new essential spaces and functions for underprivileged communities.

Understanding the existing typology of the back street, whose functions often hands itself to narrow, poorly lit spaces is fundamental in reintroducing the site back into the cultural character area of the ropewalks, through the engagement and involvement of the public through a new street strategy. The masterplan therefore addresses issues of safety, lighting, privacy, and community, along with the opportunity for adaptability and personalisation to create a public realm which is fundamentally local. The implementation of this scheme will contribute to the 24-hour economy of activity within Henry Street, through versatile spaces which are to be interpreted by their users at any given time.

Concepts of sustainability awareness and learning through the use, reuse and recycling of plastic waste and their capabilities in the built environment are also explored through the interventions acting as physical embodiments of waste, in conjunction with the retrofitting of derelict buildings. Phase 1 of the scheme presupposes the construction of a local plastic waste recycling centre which will provide the site with construction materials to be used for the interventions and offer materials to the public to create their own projects within the open-access workshop, which offers a space for local small businesses to establish and grow by offering free use of machinery and facilities to increase new skills opportunities for the local area.