Tackling Loneliness and Designing Connection into the Redevelopment of Euston Station

My Experience with Loneliness

When I was a child, I would often go to after school care while my parents worked. I hated it. I didn’t know anyone, and the kids were all older than me. My physical position outside of the group reflected how I felt inside — left out and alone. I would cry not wanting my parents to leave, but of course, they had to.

We’ve all felt lonely at some point in our lives, and for most of us living in a national lockdown, we feel lonelier than ever. Having said that, it’s just as important to reflect on when you haven’t felt lonely, when you’ve felt most connected to yourself and to those around you. For me, it was when I moved to Hong Kong when I was 19. The irony was that I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t understand the language, and to make matters stranger, I was served chicken feet on the first day! After arriving off the plane, I jumped in a cab which raced through Hong Kong in all its glory. Hong Kong wasn’t just the New York on steroids I’d dreamed of, it had mountains, beautiful high green mountains which enveloped the busy skyscrapers making up the city’s business district.

Despite the fact I was in a foreign country, I felt more at home than ever. What was it about that transition which made me feel alive and meant that people I knew for 5 months would be friends I speak to 6 years on? What made me feel so…

Connected?

The Loneliness Lab

I work as a Project Manager at Lendlease, and I applied to join the Loneliness Lab in 2018, walking through the underground tunnels of London Bridge into a world of excitement, and the chance to change the way buildings and public spaces are designed to tackle loneliness. The Lab was a design sprint where ideas could be piloted on a small scale, and then adapted to Urban Regeneration schemes, or to local communities. I was surrounded by a diverse group of people from all different backgrounds and occupations. What became clear, was that support would be required from all sections of society, including, corporates, NGO’s, charities, and local councils to create change.

I learned from the Lab that creating a sense of place isn’t just about the mix of land use you choose; social infrastructure + retail + homes + offices, doesn’t equate to a sense of place. It’s more than the sum of those parts. The question we must ask ourselves as a Developer is, can we do more to tackle loneliness? The answer must surely be yes. Bricks and mortar are no longer enough, and frankly they shouldn’t be.

The Redevelopment of Euston Station

I’m now working on the redevelopment of Euston Station, and I’ve spent time thinking about that feeling I had at the after school care, juxtaposed with the feeling of comfort and connection I experienced in Hong Kong. One thing I’ve realised is that places make us feel, and places where we feel we belong give us a sense of comfort, and the liberty to be ourselves. It’s through this lens that I try to imagine the development, and the work we are doing to turn 55 acres of land into a place where people want to come and spend time.

Our aim is to embed connectivity into the masterplan with a particular focus on public spaces, breaking down barriers which make people feel like they don’t belong, like the place isn’t their own. One way to do this has been to involve the local community in co-designing the public spaces. Lendlease and our partners, London Borough of Camden, Central Saint Martins, and MAKE @ Storygarden, hosted a workshop with local community groups, called ‘Creating Connectedness’. Participants were put into teams and had to think of ideas that could be developed to help create connections between people. The ideas were for different demographics since Camden is home to a diverse group of people, and loneliness can affect anyone. They are now being developed by participants in the workshop, and also members of the local community, and will be piloted around Camden once it’s safe to do so. If you’re planning a workshop to help find out what is causing loneliness in your area, we have some tools used in the workshop which you can find here. The tools include persona cards, a connectedness canvas, and a version of the loneliness map.

An example of how people can be brought together through design is using Nudge techniques. The example shown below plays upon our interest in having individual choice, whilst also contributing towards a collective result, and of course one of the most popular debates in football… (No Maradona?)

We are still in the early stages of the project, and there’s a lot of listening we need to do to really get understand the communities around Euston and what will make it an inclusive place for them. It’s only by listening and adapting, that we can make Euston a place where everyone feels like I did when I first moved to Hong Kong.

To find out more about the Euston Development, please visit: https://www.lendlease.com/euston/