Listening to Unheard Voices in Urban Public Space. The Cases of Ruskin Square and Plaça d’en Baró

The paper explores the concept of ‘listening to unheard voices’ in the urban environment as a design intention and strategy that contributes to an inclusive and alternative approach to urban public space, considering and promoting the imperatives of caring that such space should deliver to the city and its inhabitants. The ideas discussed in the paper find their background in the research on the concept of care in feminist urbanism and feminist studies in general, and specifically in relation to the model of the Caring City, promoting a city that places care at its centre, and aims to include a wider selection of citizens in the construction of the public good. Through the analysis of two case studies of public spaces designed by solo-women architecture practices, this paper identifies an alternative relational paradigm which gives space to unheard voices in the urban environment through processes of inclusion and participation. The two cases, Plaça d’en Baró in Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelona, Spain), designed by Catalan architectural collective Equal Saree, and Ruskin Square in the London Borough of Croydon (London, UK) designed by British architectural practice muf architecture/art, have implemented the concept of listening to ‘unheard voices’ offering insights into the contribution of women to the urban environment and how it is transformed, shaped, and used.


Introduction
This paper explores the concept of 'listening to unheard voices' in the urban environment through the narrative of two case studies of urban public spaces designed by solo-women architectural practices, which interpret and engage with the concept in different and enriching ways. In this context, 'listening to unheard voices' is intended as a design strategy that contributes to an "inclusive [approach] to many different forms of knowledge relevant to inhabiting the planet", 1 promoting the caring duties that public space should deliver to the city and its inhabitants.
The selected case studies are Ruskin Square in the London Borough of Croydon (London, UK), designed by British practice muf architecture/art, and Plaça d'en Baró in Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelona, Spain), designed by Catalan collective Equal Saree. Through the analysis of the case studies, this research investigates the design strategies, actions, and processes of these architects, and explores specific contributions these women bring to the design of urban public spaces, in terms of meanings, forms, and uses.
The two cases share the intention to listen to voices that generally remain unheard in the city, including children, caregivers, women, minorities, and the natural environment. Bringing the most vulnerable users to the centre of the design process, these case studies articulate the importance of a city that cares for everyone, offering a new understanding of the role of the architect as a 'facilitator', who creates the conditions for unheard voices to find their place in the urban environment.

Public Space and the Caring City
The ideas discussed in the paper find their background in research and scholarship about the concept of care in feminist urbanism and feminist studies. 2 Following feminist theories developed since the 1970s, care has become a critical concept for reconsidering the relationships among the built environment, nature, and human beings, particularly for disciplines such as architecture and urbanism. 3 As Joan C.
Tronto and Berenice Fisher suggest, caring should be viewed "as a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue with, and repair our 'world' so that we can live in it as well as possible". 4 Similarly, Angelika Fitz and Elke Krasny focus on the concept of interdependence, observing how today's economical and societal crisis is asking architecture and urbanism to consider the interdependence of global inhabitation and continued liveability. 5 Furthermore, according to Tronto, we should think of changing the traditional approach to public space, fundamentally by building relationships with environments, people, flora, and fauna -that exist through time as well as in space. 6 Therefore, feminist urbanism claims the social importance of care, and not to exclusively associate women with the caring role, but rather to assume that everybody is dependent on one another and the environment and, consequently, that care should be considered as a collective responsibility. 7 Fisher and Tronto indicate four main aspects of care to help explain the nature of care practices: "caring about, caring for, care giving, and care receiving", 8 and added a fifth phrase: 'caring with'. These phases stress the importance of a relational way of thinking about care in architecture. 9 These reflections on the concept of care take shape in the model of the 'Caring City', promoting a city that places care at its centre and, according to feminist geographer Leslie Kern, has the potential to spread and support care work. 10 Similarly, Col·lectiu Punt 6 discusses the concept of the Caring City 11 proposing a new urban paradigm in which people should be at the centre of decision-making processes, taking into account the diversity of people's experiences and needs in give 'care' more space, relevance, and material form.
A further interesting aspect of care in the city relates to the capacity of architects to resist the over-determination of a city's built form and social functions and to create an open city that is "never complete and it enables its inhabitants to shape and transform its design as their needs change". 22 The responsibility of architects to craft materials and their impacts can be considered as an act of care since, "in each instance, the contextual nature of caring design, and the different ways in which architects articulate an ethic of care in making others' concerns their own, is apparent". 23

Objectives and Cases Studies
Listening is the act of paying attention or hearing with thoughtful attention but also, with a more active and purposeful nuance, an act of being alert to catch an unexpected sound. 24 Both the everyday activities in public space and its design are affected by power differentials in terms of voices represented which can openly influence decisions relating to it, and which are therefore listened to. As argued by many theorists, architects and urban planners, cities have been primarily intended for middle-aged, physically able, and wealthy men. 25 These were the same men who traditionally designed the spaces that were dedicated to them and who would also have access to such spaces. In this tautological context, the conversation around public space has been more an act of self-reflection or a monologue rather than a dialogue, and 'listening' in the sense of caring about what someone had to say, and how, had a quite limited meaning and range. As Puig de la Bellacasa claims: "Listening, like speaking, is not neutral. Listening with care is an active process of intervening in the count of whom and what is ratified as concerned; it affects the representation of things". 26 Therefore, in the traditional production of public space the process of listening has neglected many actors speaking "from below". 27 This paper aims to explore what 'listening' means when public space is designed by female-led practices.
The questions and analytical lenses implied by such an inquiry address the whole interval of creation of public space, spanning the past, present, and future, as listening, in its inherent interdependence to care, is relational and emphasises the process and interconnections over the completed artefact. The project: approach, methods, process In 2016, the collective initiated a participatory process with children between the ages of 6 and 12, engaging them in imagining the new square through play and collaboration. To obtain a broader vision of the needs of the local community, participation was progressively expanded to caregivers and the elderly, groups usually neglected in the creation of public spaces but identified as relevant potential users of this square.   Ruskin Square, the second case study, is located just next to East Croydon Station in south London and stretches along its railroads. It is part of a large mixed-use redevelopment site of 13,000m 2 of building footprint and around 5,400m 2 of public space and was led by the development company Stanhope Schroders PLC.
In the early 2010s, the area had already been vacant for several years following the demolition of some office buildings; it was part of a large redevelopment project Muf's approach highlights the importance of collaboration at different levels of the design process. As Rendell suggests, in their working method collaboration and exchange is crucial: between art and architecture, through the participation of users in the design process and through the collaboration among different actors. 40 Rendell identifies in muf a particular angle to architectural practice, which proposes that the process itself is the product. Placing people and their personal experiences at the centre of their design process, muf has developed strategies to give voice to the local community that reach beyond traditional public engagement practices, consultations, or co-designing strategies.

The project: approach, methods, process
The project started with a set of action-research activities: mapping public stakeholders, identifying the underlying social potential in the area, cataloguing the wilderness that had colonised the site.
Most of the activities put in place were set in response to the propositions to attract people to the weedy and wild landscape and make them aware of its potential and inherent values and help them find beauty in it.
During this process, muf identified vestiges of past and present cultural activities in the soon-to-be demolished Warehouse Theatre situated just across the station, and in the social potential provided by the Refugee Cricket Project which brings young refugees and asylum-seekers together to play sport as a means of integration and

Plaça d'en Baró: a Systematic Approach to Include Children in the Urban Discourse
Equal Saree's participatory approach manifestly addresses gaps in the production of space. The most interesting design move they make is shifting the role of the child from object of care to an active participant in the design process. In so doing,   for the participatory process focusing on its explicit and implicit educational aims, and it focuses on the physical outcomes of the design by generating a space that cares for its users.
Finally, when exploring the work of Equal Saree, a distinctive trait in their participative methodology emerges. The design practice seems to be particularly able and willing to integrate with clarity and honesty their own point of view with voices to the choral discourse they create with the other stakeholders to achieve and boost a feminist agenda for the public realm.

Ruskin Square: a Poetic Approach to Inclusion
Ruskin Square is a complex and stratified project that exemplifies muf's approach to the public realm. As Williams suggests, "they recognise that the solution to every problem is not necessarily a building, and that it is possible to design without drawing lines". 44 In this project, the process is indeed the focus of the design rather than the final outcomes of the built environment. They follow a bottom-up, people-centred approach; it is in the palimpsest of stratified actors, objectives, artefacts, and hopes that muf digs and connects dots to eventually give a space and a time to every relevant and representative element of the place. This approach of 'close looking' to the place makes evident specific contextual histories and uses and let muf unveil the latent potential of the place and how it can be transformed for the benefit of the local communities.
A key component of muf's process is developing modes of representation that "impart a visual and tangible expression of public stakeholders as part of the design process". 45 The designers immerse themselves in the site and the community, observing the small scale of the lived experience, how people appropriate and use it, what are the social dynamics, and how a sense of collective local identity is delivered. As Fior, Clarke, and Handler affirm, their "research methods are not exhaustive and sometimes begin with casual encounters and a willingness to be led, quite literally, astray by conversations 'in the field'". 46 The first voice traced in this process lies in the history of the area. The visions and hopes of one of its most preeminent inhabitants, to which the square itself is dedicated, are given homage by the central oval timber stage that recalls the  shape of the room in which Ruskin used to teach in the nearby adult college ( figure   6). A single, mature horse chestnut tree, a remainder from the 1970's landscape, was carefully retained to become a welcoming feature of the space. Fior openly addresses such reality, 48 stating that Ruskin Square epitomises several facets of muf's methodology, especially those privileging human activities over the built form, and consequently evaluating a project as a continuum that doesn't begin or end but rather appears as a moment that germinates out of what already exists there to create the context for what will happen next.
At the end of this process, it becomes clear how muf managed to retain, in a public space that is firmly part of a business-oriented district, an unexpected feeling of openness and inclusiveness with the employment of benches and platforms of different dimensions and shapes that help attract a variety of users to the square, including children that can play there with the lion sculptures designed by artists Tudor and Lely.

Conclusions
This paper aimed to explore the modus operandi undertaken by two women-led architectural practices that offer alternatives to the traditional praxis of architecture.
Although obviously caring for the final built form, spatial configuration and shape are perceived as secondary and incidental results of their design processes. These forms arise as one of many possible manifestations of the outcomes and relationships established between the designers and the other actors involved in the process.
The two projects show notable differences in terms of processes and types of together produce a fertile system guiding the design decisions.
Both aim at bestowing a sense of agency to whomever will participate in the process, making clear their responsibilities and rights to the public city and thereby transforming historically unheard voices into possible agents of care. Both muf and Equal Saree search for and create alternative ways to include ever-larger sectors of the population in the construction of the public good.
Equal Saree's project represents a clear and well-organised exercise in terms of methodological rigour, transparency, and explicitness of the objectives. The structure of the project's participative process makes it a model of best practice and a didactic toolkit in engaging with different segments of the population and echoing their voices in public space. Each part of their process could be used in a step-by-step guide for an inclusive approach to space production.
Conversely, Muf's approach is non-linear, more complex and, poetical. The process doesn't begin with a precise objective but rather builds progressively on what the place has to offer in terms of existing and potential possibilities. Muf's strategy is to raise interest and curiosity in the many possible actors and stakeholders, and to transform passive or less involved inhabitants into active agents of care through activities that will be perceived as, at least, marginal to the architectural canon.
Both projects create spaces through forms, materials, colour, artworks, and ambiences that reverberate those voices that usually remain unheard; both the "design" processes and the physical built evidence can be seen and studied as caring design strategies. As Kern claims, "the extent to which anyone can simply "be" in urban space tells us a lot about who has power, who feels their right to the city is a natural entitlement, and who will always be considered out of place". 50 These two projects both extend the idea of 'being' to one of 'being represented' and 'being present to the process'. In this sense, they can be studied and appreciated as alternative ways to signify the representation of unheard voices in the urban discourse. These case study projects unveil a caring approach to the design of the city and an assumption of responsibility in shaping the urban environment shared by both designers and inhabitants. The process of creating a bond between space and its users is a slow and caring one. Slow because it requires time for collaboration, conversation, and trust; caring because it involves a commitment from the designers to listening, to seeing the different layers of the place in its tangible and intangible forms. As such, the design processes exemplified by these practices are in themselves acts of care for the environment and its inhabitants.