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At the Festival of Place, Rasmus Astrup, a partner with a nature-focused design studio SLA, made a case for concrete. A leading specialist of city nature and climate adaptation, Rasmus Astrup took the stage to speak about their renewed vision for David Crombie Park in Toronto, a 1.6 hectare park built as the spine of the local St. Lawrence Neighbourhood.

A landmark development for the time, David Crombie Park focused on pedestrian-friendly access and a mixed-development approach to provide the neighbourhood with amenities lacking thus far in a mixed-income community. Parts of the park were designed to serve as a school-yard for the local preschool; it’s full of playgrounds, Brutalist plazas, and eccentric choices. 

In 2020, while the pandemic was cutting through the world, the city finally made the choice to renovate the park.

It took a further two years before Rasmus Astrup and the team from SLA found a design that they were happy with, a design that prioritised their nature-forward approach, and also focused on preserving an unlikely element for the park: the concrete half walls, benches, and wading pool that had been built into the design back when architecture firms looked at concrete as the modern solution to an age-old problem – how do you build beautiful places?

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Preservation: Using What’s There

The world can always use more green places, and that is not in dispute. 

In cities, as climate change boosts temperatures to unliveable heights, the inclusion of a public park and greenery can actively work to tamp down that heat, and cool off the city and the people who live there. As a result, what tends to happen is that public spaces are scrutinised with an eye turned solely to increasing nature at all costs: no matter the history of the place, no matter the elements there.

But urban places, designed with care for the environment they will live in, have a history all of their own, one that’s shepherded design practice forward. In the 70s, the use of concrete was a hopeful one: the pinnacle of modern materials, one that would outlast the residents that lived there, for a bright future that would see the park well-used. From a sustainability perspective, the use of concrete in public parks can now be seen negatively. 

But as a historical piece, one that has been created with a purpose in mind, there’s a beauty to the Brutalism that led a small neighbourhood in Toronto well into the future, the way that it was intended to.

Rasmun Astrup’s redesign of David Crombie’s park did not follow the initial plan set out by the original Toronto firm charged with updating the park for the next phase of the future. Instead, Mr. Astrup worked around the realities of what was there: the concrete elements that have embodied the park for decades. Rather than a new park, entirely developed from the ground up, the regeneration prioritises place. 

And it cuts down on the emissions needed to complete the project. With no requirement to dig up the concrete pavers, move or destroy all of the fountains, arch, and wading pool, emissions for the project are near enough zero, and the cost of the project overall is much lower than initially anticipated, since there’s no need to build everything from scratch and even the seating can be repurposed with new armrests, back-rests, and additions.

Around and above the concrete elements, SLA have added little: more plants, more animal life, zones locked off that are intended to serve as a spot to stay a while. A cycle track has been planned out, and locations have been earmarked for indigenous use: for sacred fires, boulders inscribed with the sacred teachings, and Anishinaabe language-learning opportunities. 

The result – which will fully unveil in 2026 – is an incredible point made about the value of our urban spaces, even when the elements that they are made of do not necessarily reflect current practices. 

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Regeneration: Making Things New

Over six thousand miles away, an overpass blooms. 

This is the other side of the conversation. 

In the 60s, when public funding was finally available, Seoul city planners had a problem to solve: traffic had increased significantly, partially because of the city’s insanely quick industrialisation, and they needed to figure out a quick way to make sure that traffic jams were kept to a minimum. The result was the construction of thousands of concrete highways and overpasses, built to make sure that traffic at least flowed smoothly. 

But it was built quickly, it was built to solve a quick problem, and by the 1980s, it had deteriorated from the very problem it had solved. Vehicles over 13 tonnes were banned from the Overpass in 1998, to try to pull together a little more use out of it, but the decision was ultimately made to close down the Overpass – and to reopen it as a forest. 

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In 2015, under the guidance of Winy Maas and the firm MVRDV, the Seoullo 7017 underwent construction. 

In 2017, it opened for the public for the first time as an experiment in creating a public space that is deliberately unpolished, deliberately unfinished, and deliberately created to grow wild and buck the initial, cultivated plan. While the Highway is too shallow for any deep planting, deep planters scattered through the showcase trees and native plants over the area. Soft blue lights ensure it stays open – Seoullo 7017 is never closed – and by linking several of the outlying areas and buildings with an octopus-style walkway, it has achieved a walkable micro-city miles above busy traffic.

The Case of Park Preservation v. Park Generation

Preservation or generation?

Seoullo 7017 and David Crombie Park are two examples of how ideas set in place change – and how, by necessity, people who design public spaces have to keep an eye not only on the future, but on the past we came from, on the lessons we have learned so far, and on the way that we move forward out of those lessons. 

Seoullo 7017 taught a lesson about planning for people over planning for cars. David Crombie Park is a story about a park designed to service the population at a time when cities were still growing. Both of them exist in the same world that has led to the creation of materials that sustain and support native wildlife, to solar charging, to understanding that there may not be a way back, but there is certainly a way forward, with sustainability as a guiding principle. 

Built heritage of any kind can be adapted and amended to suit the future we want to see: a greener, softer, people-first environment that prioritises the people who come after, without forgetting the ones that inspired what came before.