3Space Turns Empty Space Into An Opportunity

Re-using empty spaces is nothing ground-breakingly new: a country like our home base, the Netherlands, suffers from a staggering amount of underused public and private spaces, as recently highlighted in Rietveld Landscape’s exhibit, Vacant NL. Generally, re-use takes a typical form: young artists move in for a short amount of time in a way that generates interest in the area that briefly transforms a city block into hipster central.

One new initiative bucking this trend in the United Kingdom is 3Space, an organisation that is taking temporarily unused properties and placing registered non-profit organisations in them for brief periods of time. There are a lot of spaces available for use, which means that this isn’t just a cool initiative to help incubate British non-profits: it’s something that landlords across the Isles want to be involved in.

A quick browse of the list of space users truly runs the gamut, ranging from an autism awareness group to a group promoting a sport called rock-it-ball that basically looks like lacrosse but twice as fun. Are there similar organisations in your area making creative use of vacant spaces?