Nutford Place ← Projects ← Root And Erect

In September 2025, Root And Erect delivered a four-week temporary pop-up activation titled Designing the Magic Carpet in partnership with The Portman Estate. Conceived as a live testing ground, the project engaged local communities while trialling a series of site-specific interventions and activities. Insights gathered during the activation are now informing the brief for a longer-term transformation of Nutford Place.

The site occupies a key public space on the southern section of Edgware Road high street, within the Marylebone ward, the Marble Arch BID area and the Portman Estate conservation area. The surrounding context is characterised by predominantly food-and-beverage uses at ground level with residential accommodation above, and the space provides an important pedestrian route between Edgware Road and Hampton Gurney Primary School. Despite its strategic location, Nutford Place is currently underused, affected by limited seating and opportunities for dwell time, insufficient lighting and perceptions of poor safety, noise conflicts with residents, incidents of anti-social behaviour, and ongoing challenges relating to cleanliness, litter and air pollution.

Designing the Magic Carpet created an opportunity to test how art, play and spatial interventions might reanimate the streetscape and support a more welcoming public realm. The temporary activation explored ways of celebrating local histories and communities, while trialling ideas around seating, wayfinding and play as catalysts for social interaction.

Through a series of artist-led workshops focused on pattern-making and three-dimensional sculpture, participants were invited to co-create the ‘Magic Carpet’. These sessions encouraged creative engagement with the site while opening up conversations about personal experiences of Nutford Place. Drawing on the cultural and historical significance of geometry and pattern, and involving a diverse mix of young people, residents and high street users, the evolving design responded to the varied needs and uses of the space.

Once installed, the ‘Magic Carpet’ became the setting for two celebratory public events: an After-School Play Day and a Community Feast Day. These moments tested the site’s social and spatial capacity, exploring how a longer-term intervention at Nutford Place could support interaction, creativity and a sense of belonging, while strengthening connections within the Marylebone community through a meanwhile use of the space.