Celebrating Marcus Willcocks

Our dear friend and colleague Marcus Willcocks was perhaps the world’s most fervent champion of public space. He dedicated his career to making city streets safer and more equitable — through joy, self-expression, and community creativity.

If Marcus were Mayor, your streets would be full of soul, colour, and life. They’d offer you places to hang out, meet others, and build trust on your doorstep. Most importantly, they’d feel like our streets — spaces we could fall in love with, where we could express our identities and truly belong. Or as we liked to call them: spaces to speak back.

Rosanna and Marcusenjoyed a friendship and a creative partnership of over twenty years. Together they launched Urban Lexicons in 2006 as a research project between friends. Over the next 18 years, they developed and evolved it through many cities and collaborations around the world. He influenced our research and ethos at The Place Bureau and collaborated with us many times, in the cities he loved so much, Bristol and Barcelona.

Marcus passed away this month after a long battle with leukaemia. We have written a tribute to celebrate his energy, his joy, his fearless spirit, and to share his research and inspiration more widely.

Head to Substack to read more about Marcus' influence