Basalt Court

A city block between two civic buildings had been left as leftover space for decades. The commission was to turn it into a genuine public room — somewhere to cross, to wait, to gather — without adding another building to an already dense civic centre.

PLINTH treated the ground itself as the project. The whole court is paved in basalt setts reclaimed from the city's own decommissioned tram lines, laid in a slightly dished plane so that rainwater draws to a central channel and the surface stays legible as a single figure rather than a leftover.

A low colonnade of in-situ concrete rings three sides, deep enough to shelter under and low enough never to compete with the civic buildings behind it. The colonnade's rhythm sets out the seating, the lighting, and the few trees, so the whole court is organized by one quiet structural idea.

It is the studio's most-used project by a wide margin — a reminder that the most valuable thing architecture can offer a city is sometimes just a well-made floor and a place to stand out of the rain.