Designing for the Future

The SBI will look carefully at tenement backcourts and discuss how residents feel about their own backcourt. The study will look at what changes, if any, might be made to the backcourt to make it meet the needs of those who live there now.
We hope to be able to produce new designs for backcourts that will encourage residents to enjoy using the space and create a space that may solve some of the problems residents encounter:

Improved garden design may enable residents to see the space differently, to spend more time in it and take an interest in what happens there.
Waste disposal can be a real problem in tenements. Modern households generate much rubbish and tenement bin stores can rarely cope with the amount of waste produced. One solution to this may be to make it easy for residents to recycle some of their waste. Glass, paper, cans and plastic and many other materials can all be recycled and if backcourts had facilities for residents to do this, less rubbish would be produced. This may help keep bin stores cleaner and make them more pleasant places to use.
The SBI is a pilot project. The four chosen sites have been selected because they show a wide range of tenement backcourt designs and may show how we can learn from these examples and improve backcourt design and use throughout the city.