Parks, allotments and markets are set to spring up across Britain on the sites of building projects that have been mothballed in the recession.

Fashionable City types have already become used to eating in temporary restaurants, shopping in temporary boutiques and getting their cultural fix at temporary theatres and galleries.

Now the “pop-up” craze is being extended, with architects competing to find new temporary public uses for sites once earmarked for buildings worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

According to a report in Building Design, the architects’ newspaper, the latest example of this trend is at the site of the abandoned Leadenhall tower in the City, where Richard Rogers had dreamed of a 48-storey skyscaper, known as the “Cheese Grater” because of its sloping shape, looming over the financial district.

British Land, the developer that put the project on hold last summer, has now shortlisted a dozen young architects to come up with alternative uses for the plot.

Their proposals range from a city farm to a small park with an eccentric claw-shaped viewing platform over the hole dug for the foundations.

The move has come as a shock to Rogers Stirk Harbour, Lord Rogers of Riverside’s firm, which learnt of the plans only this month.

The winning design, which could occupy the site for five years, is set to be announced in the next few weeks.

According to one of the shortlisted architects, British Land has been chivvied into the competiton by the City’s planning authority. The Corporation of London is determined to open up alternative uses for such sites during the economic slump and part of the brief was to create a prototype for other prominent vacant lots.

Christine Cohen, chairman of the corporation’s planning committee, said: “We need something on the site rather than a hole. There are various sites in mind [for similar schemes] in the City.”

Other high-profile developments in London are looking at fresh temporary uses. Plans to turn the site of the former Middlesex hospital in “Noho [North Soho] Square” into a £175 million mixed-use development have fallen through and its developers are supporting a temporary “Growho” scheme to turn it into allotments.

In the summer Land Security, the developer of a proposed £350 million apartment block, in Oxford Street asked Westminster Council for permission to turn the site into a temporary public square to accommodate fashion shows, corporate parties, charity events, market stalls and an ice rink.

Farther north, several sites in Leeds have already been turned over to allotments, including a stalled office scheme at Wellington Place, and Edinburgh and Glasgow councils have similar schemes.

Piers Taylor, of Mitchell Taylor Workshop, one of the practices shortlisted for the Leadenhall site has proposed a city farm, populated with colour-coded chickens. He wants to create grassy banks to picnic on and plant blackberry bushes amid the surrounding steel, granite and glass.

Asif Khan, the architect behind the proposed park, said that it was a privilege to be asked: “It’s very progressive to enable young practices to make their mark on such a prestigious site. It could have been 30 years before we had the chance to do that.”

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