Spaces Between
Frost* collective

A bold and innovative testing ground for the community that revitalises forgotten spaces.

Sydney is full of empty lots, underused parks and lonely shopping plazas. We also lack meaningful community spaces that allow people to come together and establish local identity through the sharing of arts, play, and green spaces. Spaces Between acts as a third space outside of the home or the workplace, that creates a temporary public landmark and gives ownership of these disused areas back to the local community.

Our proposal is a series of pop-up structures that inhabit the disused and empty spaces within Sydney. The form itself is an unfolded cube, resting on a ground plane without the need for permanent fixings. The cube form also allows us to interrogate the concept of a ‘closed space’ – by breaking down the 4 walls we create a liminal space within a space that can temporarily occupy these neglected areas. Each cube is transported to site in a ‘closed’ state, then unfolded temporarily and later redeployed in multiple sites, extending their lifespan and reducing waste.

These structures act as a mixed-use temporary facility, unfolding and connecting to create a gridded landscape that can be populated with ‘plugin’ furniture, plants, stages, sports equipment, market stalls, and anything else a community imagines. Our intention is for the structures to act as a testing ground for communities to explore what they find meaningful and useful, and possibly make permanent in the future. We want to give ownership of forgotten spaces back to Sydney’s communities, and let them imagine its best use.