Info
Project Details:
The reimagination of an existing park through a process of co-design with the local community. The project transfroms a well used park into a new functional landscape that promotes community cohesion and provides respite from the built environment, creating new connections to wider green links and improving biodiversity and ecology in the site.
Awards:
- Landscape Institute Awards 2025: Excellence in Collaboration, Engagement & Influence category: Winner
- Building London Planning Awards 2025: Placemaking, Heritage & Culture Award: Finalist
Images: Yuxin Ding, Kimbo Fidelo Sito, London Borough of Haringey
Where we started
Down Lane Park is a well-loved greenspace at the heart of a rapidly changing community in Tottenham Hale. It is a park of two distinct halves which have differing but established landscape characters.
Our Masterplan for the park's renewal evolved through a process of co-design alongside our client Haringey Council (combining both Parks and Regeneration).
The plans to improve the park were created in partnership with the Community Design Group (CDG), a diverse group that represents the local community and provides a range of lived experience.
The CDG's agreed focus was to shape the Masterplan proposals, inform engagement strategy, and build support for designs by channeling feedback from residents and groups who primarily use the park.
The delivery of the first two park phases were then instructed, drawing upon a successful round of funding from the Mayor of London’s Green and Resilient Spaces Fund.
Co-design workshop session held with the local community.
“Down Lane Park demonstrates how successful co-design, that fuses lived experience with technical expertise, leads to outstanding outcomes. Its qualities include a commitment to meaningful community engagement, a flexible and iterative design approach, creativity at every step, rigorous testing, local stewardship… and much more!”
Landscape Institute Awards Judges
Play and social space for older children within woodland setting.
Design
Park stewardship sessions engage with local community groups in environmental activities within the park.
Working alongside Lisa Taylor from Coherent Cities as a facilitator, we devised a co-design process to establish a shared vision for the park before taking the design proposals forward to broader public consultation.
This collaborative process established ten critical objectives focusing on safety, accessibility, green space expansion, enhanced recreational facilities, biodiversity, climate resilience, and improved connections to the wider green network.
Wider local engagement included local schools, such as Harris Academy who use the park for sports, the local football club and girls' teams. Their feedback informed the proposals and we made sure that the design improved safety for younger people as well as offering safe access and spaces for girls and young women.
Accessible design was also implemented for people with SEN, mobility issues, and older people, providing an inclusive environment where people from all backgrounds can come together.
The park masterplan was devised through a co-design process alongside the Community Design Group.
The masterplan strengthens east-west connections from Tottenham High Road to the Lea Valley via the Chestnut Road linear park and the Paddock greenspaces. The design also reinforces cycle routes to broader destinations such as Enfield and Meridian Water.
New park entrances to the south promote alternative corridors for movement to and through the park, including during evening times when vibrancy is created by neighbouring retail offer, sports courts, and more convenient park entrances. Lighting design by Lighting Follows Behaviour complements and strengthens these safe movement routes.
The project is a pioneering example of community-driven park transformation, rooted in our lasting legacy in social infrastructure and design for people. The duration and intensity of the co-design process enabled a deep understanding of the park and a genuinely devolved design-process ensuring lived experience informed each design move.
Down Lane Park is a pioneering example of community-driven park transformation.
This is a community-driven park transformation, rooted in our lasting legacy in social infrastructure and design for people.
New habitat types such as meadow planting, selective grass mowing, SuDS and attenuation basins support the ecology of the park.
The replacement outdoor gym provision supports multiple user groups whilst being integrated into the naturalistic character of the park.
Completed playspace is set within existing trees, providing landmark play destination along key movement routes.
The masterplan strengthens east-west connections from Tottenham High Road to the Lea Valley via the Chestnut Road linear park and the Paddock greenspaces.
Core team
Kate Digney
Studio Director, Place
Glyn Tully
Studio Director, Place
Simon Abbott
Associate
Visakha Sroy
Senior Landscape Architect
