ELEVEN DESIGN THINK TANKS AIMING TO TRANSFORM THE CITY

How can design improve the way we live in cities? Design Think Tanks (DTTs) at the LSA put forward proposals to help meet the targets set out in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. They are a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.

Design Think Tanks are a 14-week module in the First Year of our MArch in Designing Architecture. They are collaborative research and design projects undertaken by students, working with leading architectural practices in London. The DTT work builds on studies from the first design module, Design Cities, which each year focuses on a specific area of London and provides extensive contextual material.  

Each year the LSA selects a shortlist of DTT topics to be studied from a long list of suggestions made by the LSA Practice Network. The study topics suggested are ones that require urgent consideration, innovative thinking and design solutions that will generate significant social and environmental progress and beneficial urban change.

Students work in collaborative groups led by senior staff from the sponsoring practice on one of the shortlisted study topics and are supported by LSA faculty to guide students through the research and design process.The module is framed by three key critical reviews where external critics and reviewers are invited to debate and help develop the work: Symposium 1, the Design Workshop, and Symposium 2.

The DTT studies are published in summary in Citizen Magazine and each group prepares a comprehensive report setting out the research and design propositions for distribution to political leaders, administrators, business leaders and opinion formers in London and beyond.

2021/21 DESIGN THINK TANKS

Community Life and Death in the Shared City

• DTT Leaders: Allies and Morrison + Erect
• Site: Blackfriars
• Research question: How can older generations contribute to the life of our city? As a society, how can we move away from the common notion of seeing older people as patients in the city and towards them as participants through life and death? We will explore architectural and social juxtapositions in and around the site and seek to create truly intergenerational spaces, and turn our attention specifically to the experience of end of life and the commemoration of death. Read the full brief here

Ann Toebbe, Friends: Lisa and Tim, 2018

Beyond Housing: The Architecture of Wellbeing

• DTT Leaders: RCKA
• Site: Tower Hamlets
• Research question: At a time when more and more of our urban space is being utilised for new housing we ask: how do we define community wellbeing? What influence should it have on our approach to housing? This group will explore how architecture can support a thriving community: one that provides all its members, regardless of age, skills or background, with the spaces, relationships and tools they need to live happy, healthy and full lives. Read the full brief here

Highgate Newtown Community Centre by RCKa

Creative Blocks

• DTT Leaders: Studio Egret West + Wimshust Pelleriti
• Site: Bermondsey
• Research question: How can we consider the impact of mass production on the social and cultural fabric of the city, for existing communities and generations to come? Could this mean cheaper housing? More flexibility to move more often? A cultural shift away from ownership towards a sharing economy? We will consider the social impact of historical shifts towards mass production techniques and evaluate the capacity for modular design to make a positive contribution to the environmental, financial and social conditions of city living,  proposing new value systems centred on human interaction and ecological sustainability. Read the full brief here

Excavating the City

• DDT Leaders: Ash Sakula
• Site: Ludgate
• Research question: What can we do to make large office block buildings more active for  citizens and immediate neighbourhood sites? How can we creatively retrofit large sealed office buildings for wider social purpose, for a more humane city, create opportunities for temporary uses and fluid networking. We will study how the life of these buildings can be creatively managed through alternative approaches to structure, servicing and aesthetics, and make architectural proposals that actively respond to the planet’s climate emergency – in unexpected ways. Read the full brief here

LCB Depot by Ash Sakula Architects

The Space of the High Street

• DTT Leaders: RSHP
• Site: Poplar
• Research question: How can we re-imagine the street as a space that is defined and considered like a piece of architecture and not just a residual outcome of other buildings or transport planning?  We will consider how vibrant public spaces that are viewed positively by the community are rarely the outcome of a singular design move, but rather the consequence of multiple design factors and layers of information over time. Spatial propositions will seek to make sense of these layers and apply them to overall design strategy for new kinds of public space. Read the full brief here

Streetscape – Public Realm sketch for Town Gateways Design by BiboStudio

The Phygital City

• DTT Leaders: Penoyre Prasad
• Site: Walthamstow High Street
• Research question: In light of the digital transformation of our everyday lives and habits,  how does the changing nature of the high street embrace the opportunity to create a more vibrant, democratic and diverse town centre? We will study how London’s high streets are in the midst of sudden and radical change and make spatial propositions in response to: a combination of the rise in online shopping, Covid-19 pandemic, and changing tastes and fashions, has seen an acceleration in the transformation of our retail environments. Read the full brief here

Future of Urban Travel

• DTT Leaders: Weston Williamson
• Site: Bishopsgate
• Research question: By studying the current proposals for the Bishopsgate Goods Yard site, we ask what are the trends for future urban transportation in relation to sustainability, climate change? Over the next 50 years we anticipate that the way we travel will change enormously and have great effects on the spaces and places in the city, particularly in light of post pandemic influences. We will examine alternative plans, in relation to this condition, to different parts of the city and emerging technologies. Read the full brief here

Google Maps

Water Agora – Urban Infrastructure

• DTT Leaders: IDOM
• Site: South Bank
• Research question: What architectural and urban strategies for London’s Thames River banks can support the city to be both water resistant and water friendly? Not just about responses to increasingly humid weather conditions, or how to protect our riverfronts from the rise of water levels, but rather – how to affect the design of new buildings and community spaces in a positive and creative way – embracing vernacular, infrastructural, environmental, hydraulic, and energy savings – through an interaction with this fluid element. Read the full brief here

Thames Barrier (Image: Thamesriver sightseeing)

A Comfortable Home

• DTT Leaders: Maccreanor Lavington
• Site: Rotherhithe
• Research question: What is a comfortable home for all (or at least the majority), and how can we deliver housing fit for the climate emergency? We will try to answer this by looking at instances where the typology may adapt (e.g dual-aspect homes) and where the rulebook needs to change (e.g. minimum space standards). We will start by studying one home and its constituent arrangement of rooms and then look at the building and the journey from the street to the apartment’s door, all the shared spaces within the building, and finally the building’s place in the neighbourhood. At each scale, we will investigate the environmental challenges that homes of today need to face – and then design the home and the block again, but from the inside.Read the full brief here

Making Good

• DTT Leaders: ORMS
• Site: Wapping
• Research question: Where does the value lie in London’s heritage assets – and how do we quantify this value? What is the current position (government and profession) on heritage, restoration and adaptive use?  When buildings fall into disrepair, do we just write them off and build again? This is no longer a viable option in the current climate emergency. The way we restore and adaptively re-use our buildings needs a fundamental change to tackle the crisis we are currently facing. Waste is material without identity and we believe that Material Passports have the ability to help us define the values of heritage assets for recovery, recycling and re-use, empowering the circular economy. We will create new adaptive typologies that embrace the ever-changing needs of communities and the heritage assets located within them. Read the full brief here

Astley Castle by Witherford Watson Mann

Re-Wilding Environments

• DTT Leaders: Bell Phillips Architects
• Site: Aldersgate
• Research question: How can we adapt and “wild” our urban environment to make a city that functions as a healthy ecosystem and is fit for human habitation in a post pandemic world We will explore an intensely urban area of the city to learn what makes it a functioning habitat where humans can flourish – and where it is lacking, how to offer spatial propositions that can sustain humans and their corresponding natures, physically, socially and economically. Read the full brief here
  

  Community Retrofit. Credit: Peter Barbalov, Edwin Tizard, Flora Sallis-Chandler, Farrells