The pandemic has renewed an emphasis on parks’ benefits for the health of the city and exposed the vexing financial crises it faces. With this background, the project starts as a critique of the extant typology of public parks and argues for its reconceptualisation. Understanding ‘park’ as a verb instead of a noun shifts focus from creating segregated and enclosed landscapes, to applying ‘park-ish’ spatial qualities to urban spaces.

Rectory Farm is an abandoned agricultural land near Heathrow. In 2017, Hounslow Council approved a proposal to excavate its minerals, replace this space with underground warehouses, and cover the site with a new park. Questioning whether a park in the conventional sense is suitable for the site, the project envisions an alternative to the existing proposal for Rectory Farm. A new landscape blends the area’s three crucial elements: its logistics industry, suburban housing and its natural environment, encouraging richer interactions between the three.

The artificial nature of this landscape, and the inclusion of both industrial and residential functions raises challenges and opportunities, to integrate nature with services. The green space combined with service systems that deal with ventilation, lighting and thermal comfort, becomes part of the fundamental infrastructures that enable a park-ish urban life.