The Meaning of Meanwhile

How Phase Zero creates value before development begins

Development timelines are stretching. Planning, supply chains and cautious capital markets are extending the distance between acquiring land and opening a finished place. Costs accumulate, sites deteriorate and community goodwill can fade.

Yet a longer horizon creates time to do something useful. What can happen now that helps this place become what it is meant to be?

For more than 20 years, Greenspace has worked with developers, landowners and city-shapers to turn complex sites into distinctive places. Identity, culture and human connections can begin forming long before construction is complete.

We call this opportunity Phase Zero: a deliberate approach to meanwhile activity that discovers a place’s potential, invites people in, tests ideas and helps shape what happens next.

Value before the buildings arrive

A market, festival or pop-up park can bring activity and a little economy to an empty site. However, when planned from the outset, meanwhile can also become an integral part of the development strategy.

Real activity answers questions that renderings and forecasts cannot fully resolve. Who comes? What brings them back? Where do people gather? Which businesses find an audience? What culture is missing from the neighbourhood?

The returns take three forms:

• Direct returns include rent, events, concessions, sponsorship and potentially reduced security and maintenance costs.
• Knowledge returns come from observing behaviour and testing propositions before committing major capital.
• Strategic returns include stronger relationships, an emerging identity and greater confidence in future demand.

Communities receive value while development progresses. Future occupiers inherit an audience and established patterns of use. Developers gain evidence to inform decisions.

Build temporarily. Learn efficiently. Invest permanently with greater confidence.

Experience as evidence

In the city of Valencia, Spain, Heineken Greenspace brought artists, performers and audiences into three acres of derelict warehouses. Conceived by Greenspace with Heineken and the city council, the programme tested the potential for a sustained cultural offer. The warehouses subsequently reopened as Las Naves, supporting creative work, events and performance. Early activity made a possible future visible.

At Deptford Foundry, Greenspace’s Deptford Stories connected the site’s industrial history with its arts community. Immersive theatre and work by 30 local artists attracted more than 1,500 visitors, helping developer Anthology build relationships and articulate its ambitions. The subsequent partnership with Second Floor Studios created 85 affordable artist studios, carrying cultural value into the permanent development.

In South Boston, The LOT on the Dot transformed an underused site into a flexible setting for film nights, markets, music, food and community events. More than 6,500 people attended over two years. Recurring activity demonstrated the site’s appeal and helped attract a hospitality operator to lease it, generating a return for the landowner.

At Battersea Power Station, Greenspace’s “Powered by Positive” idea drew on the building’s history of generating power. Illuminated hoardings and light installations expressed its future cultural life during construction. The annual Light Festival demonstrates how an early creative idea can remain relevant as a place evolves.

At Regent Quarter, moments from King’s Cross Station, a bold identity inspired by workshop pegboards turned a disconnected site into an immersive cultural environment. Thousands of coloured dots provided the setting for performances, installations and fashion events, including connections with London Fashion Week. Early activation raised awareness, built cultural relationships and increased the destination’s appeal to potential tenants and investors.

Six steps to Phase Zero

Our approach follows six connected steps:

1. Unearth: Understand the site’s history, culture, communities, assets and opportunities.
2. Articulate: Establish its purpose, proposition and guiding principles, rooted in the people it serves.
3. Shape: Develop the identity, stories, partnerships and experiences that bring its ambition to life.
4. Open: Introduce uses and programmes that invite people to explore, participate and connect.
5. Observe: Measure participation and learn what people use, value and respond to.
6. Evolve: Apply those insights to future activity and, where possible, the permanent development.

Five principles guide decisions throughout: start proactively; let the place lead; use meanwhile as a research tool; stay fluid; and build emotion. Each programme should evolve with its communities.

Creating legacy

People experience places through what they can do there: walk a path, attend a performance, visit a business or meet someone. Phase Zero starts those encounters while the physical future is taking shape.

Some interventions disappear. Others evolve or become permanent. What matters is carrying forward their value: stronger relationships, deeper understanding and a community with a part in its future.

Work with Greenspace

Greenspace is an international award-winning design consultancy and placemaking practitioner working with landowners, developers, operators and civic authorities.

Our meanwhile approach brings research, identity, design, cultural programming and measurement together. We uncover what makes a place distinctive, articulate its ambition, create ways for people to experience it and use what we learn to guide its evolution.

The true meaning of meanwhile lies in the future it makes possible.