UNIT G
Productive City, Wild City Hwei Fan Liang, Christian Groothuizen
This year Unit G explored ways of evolving a productive city – in which we engage with the processes of food, energy and resource production. We looked for imaginative architectural propositions that could contribute to a viable, sustainable urban future. We also questioned how this more productive city could be more ‘wild’, challenging our relationship with urban nature as well as offering space for play and informal occupation. London is a city of consumption, relying on frictionless flows of imports from the rest of the country and far beyond. Its population density makes true selfsufficiency a remote possibility, but as the social and ecological costs of our current culture of consumption, supply and waste increase, we propose that localised, distributed production is a crucial part of a viable, sustainable urban future. Our location for the exploration of these proposals is an area close to Old Street where the City of London meets the Borough of Islington. It has a richly layered history of uses, most notably a dense fabric of mixed industries in the 18th Century which included distilleries and breweries, timber yards and furniture works.
LONDON, GRANADA AND ALMUÑECAR
The present-day context includes creative and tech industries, restaurants and cafes, Whitecross Street market, schools, community and leisure facilities. The proposal sites are on either side of Golden Lane, within and adjacent to post-war housing blocks – the Golden Lane Estate, and the Peabody Whitecross Street estate. Students developed individual projects that respond to present day social needs and readings of the city, set against future scenarios and possibilities – each weighted towards a personal position on integrating production into the city, providing habitats for humans and other species, or giving value to the role of the wild in urban living.
