I am now thinking about two projects very different and very important to me: Victoria Place Woking and a confidential site in London that we have been trying to develop and deliver for a long time.
Looking at Woking I can see what has been so important and the real driver: the vision for the town and its community and the willingness to start a new chapter of the town’s history. The development was only the last piece of the puzzle, the element that visually completed the town centre vision and emotionally connected the local communities all together by giving them a new sense of belonging and pride.
Thinking about London, the story is completely different. The project, surrounded by a lot of other good designs, is not set only to compete with the others but, on the contrary, to help transforming its context into a new destination for London, open to everyone, from local communities to internationals, classless, and act as the new catalyst that will change the way the place and the area have been seen and perceived during the last few decades.
These two projects clearly define why it is so important to understand first the context and its character, they have both lessons learnt that can definitely inform other projects, but after all one size does not fit all.