LSA Design Think Tank – Adaptive Typologies

2pm – Feed Chickens

Adaptive Typologies, one of our Design Think Tanks, creates an intergenerational city that unites older and younger citizens in an urban realm enriched by farming and wilderness

The Adaptive Typologies Think Tank proposes five principles for an all-age city: Collective Rituals and Values; Micro Local Economies; Ecological Rewilding; Native Pride; and Technological Empowerment.

We respond to uncertain futures with the belief that the new way of living will be a simple one in a complex world. Alongside this speculative narrative based on contemporary conditions and predicted trends, the process was further driven in response to conversations with local people – our characters – hearing their real issues, and observing their daily rituals. We transport you thirty-five years into the future, to discover where our characters will be, and what they will be celebrating.

2051 London Festival Map

2051. Poplar, East London; one hundred years passed from the Festival of Britain. Disenchanted by capitalist city ideologies, a deluge of global perils, and a mounting ecological boredom, a slice of the city and its once docile inhabitants regain autonomy in a bid to protect and progress.

Looming urban expansion – specifically endangering Bartlett Park – instigates an unexpected local assemblage, with a collective repugnance towards formidable development. The local resistive movement join arms to plant a forest holding guard to the endangered public land. Polarities between bingo-mourning pensioners and cognitively lethargic youths dissolve with shared vigilante efforts to reclaim, rewild, reinvigorate the mono-cultured terrain. Native fried chicken rituals are exalted with the introduction of fowl into the woodland for shared cultivation.

6am – Going to school

Among far reaches of artificially furrowed urbanscape, an astonishing wilderness rapidly encroaches. Hunter, gatherer, scavenger, coder, occupying the forest at once. Bionic great-grandparents ramble freely; classes function amongst thicket; daily grind restores to seasonal routine; community spirit fleshes out. The poly-aged tribe operate a symbiotic Wild East Economy with cultivation and sufficiency at heart. Pivotal site architectures adapt to accommodate and revere the newfound agrarian process with the re-use of a church ruin and a defunct pub.

The 2051 Festival of Britain gives global exposition to this London phenomenon, where territories exemplify an arcadian revival. With the reinvigoration of the land we restore ourselves, in a life that is richer and rawer.

Adaptive Typologies Led by Carol Costello from Cullinan Studio and Emma Flynn from AStudio, Adaptive Typologies explores building types for tomorrow’s needs and desires. Its practice members are Allies and Morrison, AStudio, Aukett Swanke, Cullinan Studio, Duggan Morris, Jestico + Whiles, Orms and Solid Space; and its student members are Emily Fribbance, Nick Keen, James Mackenzie and Emiliano Zavala.