Feria Urbanism is leading a team to create a new town square in Dorchester — designed be a playful addition to the Dorset town, addressing the needs of the whole community.

Cornhill is the site of Dorchester’s original town water pump and the traditional location of its market. The combination of historic mercantile activity and the Roman water source shaped this distinctive “original community space”, which became our starting point.

Our scheme is built around two key principles: restoring the pump as a working water source — it remains in place but has been out of use for as long as anyone can remember — and re-establishing Cornhill as a place to stay, better serving Dorchester’s growing intergenerational community.

We began our research by asking: who uses the minimal seating on site? How long do they stay? And what other kinds of other activity are on site at present?

An innovative element of our research was to take a set of foam building blocks on site to playfully engage with the public, testing out new ideas. During this experimentation, several children enjoyed clambering over them while their parents stopped to talk to us. Our emerging designs were later drawn onto the ground in chalk so both the public and the client team could visualise the change at 1:1 scale.

Our research results gave us several key elements to play with in terms of the inclusivity outcomes we want to achieve. These included:

– comfortable seating and more of it, especially important for an older generation
– a place to play, especially for younger children
– a place to hang out, especially for teenagers
– a place for local cultural institutions to engage various local communities
– a meeting place that will connect the site to its Roman roots allowing a greater understanding of the town’s history, important for residents and visitors alike
– using water as a focal point to draw a diverse community into a single shared environment
– using the right ergonomics and dimensions to accommodate those less mobile and those using wheelchairs

Our final designs comprise minimalist forms are multipurpose: seating, play and display. On occasion, the largest element can be used as a performance stage or place for public engagement with the museums.