London’s slowest ten minutes
Camden Highline is such an exciting project: a chance to reclaim, reuse and reimagine. So when the international design competition call went out, we were eager to get involved.
Got two minutes?
Dig in for a short read.
Introducing Space & Time
At the beginning of the lockdown there was a sense we had all come off a fast-moving carousel and one day soon we would be leaping back on. Space & Time arose from that experience of jumping off, and our growing feeling that we shouldn’t just go back to things as they were.
We have 30 minutes to save the world
Lockdown made our world shrink, with everything we might need to survive and to thrive within 30 minutes of our doorstep, on foot or by bike. It made us find out more about our neighbours and our neighbourhoods, the healing power of nature and the spaces we share. Is now our big chance to plan the world around us in a different way?
A tumbled country
Most new housing in England is being designed without any character or sense of identity. LDA Design’s Ian Houlston and Dr Stephen Carter of Headland Archaeology argue that there is no excuse for making ‘non places’.
No more mean streets
Global lockdown has resulted in the emptying of our streets of cars. With UK road travel at 1955 levels, pollution is dropping. Pop-up bike and jogging lanes replace traffic jams and the air is easier to breathe. When lockdown lifts, will there be a new-found energy and appetite to rethink and reclaim our streets at a pace and on a scale unimaginable before the crisis? The good news is that this process of reclamation is already well underway.
Is grass the great disruptor?
Grass has a power. Feel its softness underfoot and all we want to do is stretch back, play games, relax. Does it belong in our hard-paved city centres? Cannon Ivers thinks it does.
Breaking with ‘town and gown’
Are we all expecting too much of our University Estates? For centuries we have been happy to let them focus on ‘gown’ and now we want them to drive social and urban change in the ‘town’.
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