DAISY NARAYANAN 32 WHAT IF..? 40 ARCHITECTURE FRINGE

Daisy Narayanan carries responsibility for marrying mobility and placemaking on her shoulders

THE CITY OF EDINBURGH COUNCIL HAS FOUND A FIGUREHEAD IN THE SOFTLY SPOKEN FORM OF DAISY NARAYANAN TO GUIDE THE CITY TOWARD THE PROMISED LAND OF A CARBON NEUTRAL FUTURE BY 2030. AS SENIOR MANAGER FOR MOBILITY AND PLACEMAKING NARAYANAN WILL FUSE LANDSCAPE AND TRANSPORT TO BRING PEOPLE CLOSER DURING AN ERA OF SOCIAL DISTANCING.

Charged with fusing the City of Edinburgh’s placemaking and transport strategies, as Senior Manager for Mobility and Placemaking, urbanist Daisy Narayanan is at the forefront of efforts to meet the city’s ambitious carbon neutrality targets by 2030, and ensuring that the capital emerges from the pandemic as a greener and a healthier place.

With a lifetime’s passion for architecture and urban design, Narayanan is also experienced, having worked across the UK and Asia. She first arrived in Britain in 2004 as a student, quickly establishing herself as a potent force for change through high-profile stints as director of urbanism at Sustrans, as well as serving the Edinburgh Climate Commission and the Climate Assembly Evidence Group.

Now, in her biggest role to date, Narayanan will put her passion and experience into practice on behalf of The City of Edinburgh Council. Having previously been seconded to the authority in 2018 and 2019 to lead Edinburgh’s ten-year city centre transformation plan, when she championed the introduction of a monthly carfree event in the Old Town, Narayanan is acutely aware of the responsibility she bears to all residents from the city centre World Heritage sites to the furthest flung residents in Sighthill. Her initiatives such as the City Mobility Plan for introducing carbon-neutral transport options and the 20-minute neighbourhood programme have helped to further her aims.

Speaking to Urban Realm following her appointment Narayanan said: “I brought a lot of my learning from

Edinburgh to Sustrans in terms of how we talk about walking and cycling and sustainable transport within a wider city-building agenda.

In a sense, it’s almost going back a few years. It’s so familiar but so much has changed since I was last here. We’ve had the pandemic; we’ve had Black Lives Matter and we’ve had discussions around equity. In a sense for me that is where my focus will be, looking not just at the city centre. My focus is working with communities to find out what they’ve learned over the past year.”

Having grown up in Mumbai Narayanan is no stranger to acute environmental and traffic pressures but Edinburgh faces a very particular set of challenges, including the climate emergency, inclusion, equity and bringing communities together to explore the future of their neighbourhoods.

Asked how the intervening years have helped to shape her world view Narayanan said: “We’ve had a chance to reassess our values and perceptions of our places, how we live and where we live. I have two young children and watching how places have changed through their eyes has helped my thinking evolve. There’s so much inequity built into how our cities are developed from the transport system to housing. For me the focus has shifted from creating beautiful places to inclusive places, it’s not very different but it focuses the lens on how we engage with people.

“Before the pandemic, there was a programme called Spaces for People which travelled across Scotland. For me, there is a lot to be learned from that in how we shape communities going forward. We have a chance to come together and change, we need to come together and collaborate. It sounds cheesy but it’s the only way forward.”

Asked what the biggest stumbling blocks are to achieving these aims Narayanan replied “Nobody wants to live somewhere that isn’t good. Everybody wants spaces and cities to be the best that they can be but there are different ways of going about that. There are always going to be challenges around finance and solid thinking and pacing. The pandemic has allowed us to switch off from how things used to be done to how they can change very quickly due to circumstances.

“It’s not always easy to discuss taking away car parking spaces from businesses because that’s what everybody is used to. But when we talk about evidence and say ‘here is what happened to places that have done this it changes the narrative and idea of what a street is meant to be.

“Transport is political. Over the past years at Sustrans, I’ve learned that politics has to be taken out of placemaking as far as possible to get city leaders and elected members to agree. Elected members are there to serve their communities and everybody wants the best but they have different ways to approach it.”

In a world where long-term thinking is normally tied to election cycles pushing the goalposts back a decade to 2030 when global warming is likely to reach 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is vital if there is to be any hope of addressing the climate crisis.

One factor in Edinburgh’s favour is its compactness which makes it well-positioned to act quickly and

Sustrans spearheaded this 160-tonne steel bridge spanning the 100m width of the Black Cart to connect Inchinnan, Renfrew & Paisley with new pedestrian and cycle infrastructure

decisively to transport a dense population. Can the city serve as an international exemplar? “Absolutely. It’s a magnificent city and it’s a privilege to be working in a world heritage site. The medieval streets of the old town were never built for tourist buses but neither were places outwith the centre such as Gorgie, Stockbridge and Granton.

“It’s a timeless city and my role is to change it slightly for the better and then hand it on to the next generation. We’re so well positioned in geography and the places we have.”

As horizons shrink in tandem with the shutdown of international travel we’re all more appreciative of our local environment and living our lives at a slower pace. Can these societal shifts feed through to what you’re doing and accelerate your goals? With tourists gone, what’s it like to have the city to yourself at last! “Learning from other cities such as Paris everything is changing and we have the opportunity to shape some of that change”, says Narayanan. “So let’s make sure we have options

Left - As deputy director for the built environment at Sustrans Narayanan helped deliver The South City Way in Glasgow Right - The £6.5m active travel route stretches from Victoria Road to the Stockwell Street junction in the Merchant City

for people who want to hop on their bike. Let’s put in infrastructure for people. My kids have been cycling on city-centre streets which they wouldn’t have before. You can hear birdsong, the sounds of the city have changed.”

“I sit on Scotland’s Climate Assembly’s Evidence Group and there is something powerful about evidence and engagement coming together to remove some of the misinformation that you see on social media. To bring transport and planning together in the way the council has done is brilliant and something we’ve been saying for a long time as urbanists. We need to have fewer silos and more collaboration.”

By November Narayanan hopes to be in a position to reveal some concrete ambitions for her adopted city but in the meantime, she is undertaking a series of conversations around what people want. Refusing to be drawn on her preferences a diplomatic Narayanan promises to oversee as collegiate a role as possible but if 100 people in a room give 100 different answers, how can you tap into the embodied energy and passions of individuals without the machinery seizing up from conflicting agendas?

“I’m not here to design the city centre or say this is my vision. I’m here to bring people together and then set the direction,” says Narayanan. “Hopefully we find a consensus and we travel together on this journey. Sometimes you have local authorities where everyone is so stressed and it becomes difficult to hold the message of why we are doing something. That is why it is so important that when people see bollards appearing on

the streets that they understand why it is being done.

“It’s so tempting to push in certain directions. I have my preferences on how the city can be made more sustainable and attractive. I’m trying to hold myself back and the first step is listening to people and that will take a while. The regional aspect of making sure there are sustainable opportunities for people outside Edinburgh to reach the city is just as important as the fine urban fabric.”

Despite not having formally stepped into the role Narayanan has already had a foretaste of the type of pressures to be expected with her seven-year-old daughter wasting no time to inform her of every dropped kerb needing installed on the cycle to school. “Whenever she sees a dropped kerb she says, ‘mum can you please sort this out?’ I’ll be the one everyone wants to shout at!”

I came here in 2004 to do my master’s degree and I still remember coming out of Waverley and seeing the World Heritage skyline, that moment stays with you for life. As someone who made Scotland my home, I can’t believe I have the opportunity to shape how the city will be. I’m here for a blip in the timeline of the city and I don’t want to change what makes the city special.”

With an international outlook and an approachable nature, Narayanan is well placed to navigate the competing interests to be found in a city where commercial and heritage pressures combine with the often-divergent needs of locals and visitors to present a headache for policymakers. At a pivotal moment in history, Edinburgh’s mobility and placemaking strategy are in good hands.

W H A T I F ... ?

SCOTLAND’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE 2021 VENICE BIENNALE IS A HOMEGROWN AFFAIR IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE. IT EXPLORES HOW WE CAN LIVE TOGETHER AT A TIME WHEN WE HAVE ALL BEEN PUSHED APART BY CASTING PREVIOUS BOUNDARIES AND CONSTRAINTS ASIDE. PHOTOGRAPHY BY BASH ART CREATIVE

By swapping Venice for Dundee, Scotland’s contribution to the 2021 Biennale Architettura has moved closer to the people, capitalising on the pandemic to shed its elitist glamour in favour of a notably more grounded affair on soggy home soil.

Held within the angular embrace of the V&A What if...?/ Scotland will run until 21 November, inviting members of the public through its doors to post their built environment wishes in-person to an on-site wishing well. Banishing preconceptions and opening the door to all it is as democratic a process as possible, dispensing with the paternal approach of setting out solutions in favour of taking a step back and asking ‘How will we live together?’

Curated by 7N Architects in partnership with Architecture & Design Scotland the free exhibition is the culmination of a novel one-to-one programme of mentorship that paired 25 individuals chosen to represent five separate places with a dedicated companion drawn from the fields of architecture, art and design. In this way, individual wishes could be interpreted and conceptualised in a form that might be picked up by the powers that be for follow-through action.

With places that include a town, a city, a. village, an island and a rural community the five locations range from Wester Hailes in Edinburgh to Paisley in Renfrewshire, Annan in Dumfries and Galloway, Elgin in Morayshire, and Lerwick in Shetland; seeding a process that has resulted in an eclectic melting pot of ideas ranging from a night market to boost the after-hours economy of Elgin to a pop-up theatre in Annan. Documenting the grassroots process, a series of short films by

Basharat Khan seed further discussions among visitors with the exhibition environment itself designed to inspire and encourage quiet reflection of what is possible when we are freed from all constraints.

Speaking to Urban Realm at the launch project lead Ewan Anderson of 7N Architects said: “I’m pleased it’s here. I was initially disappointed that it wasn’t going to Venice but it just makes so much sense beyond the Covid restrictions. Fundamentally this is about advocacy and making the case for more direct involvement between architects and communities to establish a shared vision and how that can gain more traction in the planning and delivery process.”

This collegiate approach stands in stark contrast to the combative nature of the planning process which can place design professionals at loggerheads with the communities they work in, widening a gap between the profession and the public. Anderson said: “You could view the planning process as a fundamentally confrontational process. Rather than proposals being put forward and people reacting to them wouldn’t it be better if local place plans came out of proper community engagement? Not just ‘what do you think about this proposal?’ but ‘what do you want your place to be like in 20/30 years?’

“That is happening in some places such as Loch Lomond & The Trossachs where charette work we’ve undertaken with the National Park Authority has formed the basis of its local plan but it doesn’t happen that often. It’s always been placed in the too difficult category. After coming out of lockdown and the extraordinary events of the past two years I don’t think it can be placed in the too difficult category anymore. It’s essential.”

By staging an exhibition of what can be achieved where a spirit of common purpose is allowed to flourish Anderson hopes to seed a broader discussion that generates ideas as a direct response to people’s wishes. In the process, Anderson believes that it makes a compelling case for the civic value that architects bring to communities while helping rediscover the soul of architecture.

By adopting a one-to-one pairing of architects and citizens the What If team aims to get to the core of what makes people with the greatest stake in spaces tick. “We’ve stripped away all the layers and processes involved in realising places to bring it down to the hopes and dreams a community has and how an architect can respond to that,” says Anderson. “It’s about making people feel more connected and enfranchised in the future of their places but it also shows the value of architects and designers to make places better. That’s about making the case for the profession as much as anything. It’s about trying to reposition the profession to offer something critical to the future of the country.”

Left - Designers and architects teamed up with locals to develop actionable ideas. Right - Nicola Atkinson of Beautiful Materials worked with Callum McDougall to devise a Together brand for Annan that could unite generations

Is it fair to say there’s been an element of distancing in recent years, has there been a slow, broad retreat? “Yes, the size of the bureaucratic machine involved in delivering places has only grown. How can we strip all that back and deliver someone’s wishes for the future? That often gets lost in the process but it shouldn’t.”

Is there an issue that in reaching out with one question you will receive a multitude of different responses? How did the process of selecting individuals work? “The five places were picked because either ourselves or A&DS had connections with them. It was partly to renew initiatives going on in those places but also there was an established network. There is a host in each place who was the connection and who picked a cross-section of local citizens who would respond positively. Ourselves and A&DS picked the architects to give a leg-up to younger practices and more established practices who we knew would give it a lot of thought.”

While an open-ended question can elicit the broadest range of responses it can also lack focus, was it felt necessary to impose any boundaries or constraints to help channel the process? “We didn’t set any boundaries, it’s deliberately broadranging”, remarks Anderson. “We didn’t want to constrain it by their being a particular delivery route. The wish came first. You can say, so what? This is just a bunch of ideas but the primary >

Above - The team on patrol scouting out potential and problems on the streets of Elgin Below - Niamh O’Reilly at 7N led the Elgin workshops, which included options for a new public venue

An outdoor market in Elgin would boost the after hours economy and satisfy social distancing requirements. Image by Claire Hope, Buro Happold.

purpose of the exhibition is one of advocacy, by showing what can be achieved by listening to the wishes of local people and placing architects more closely within those communities.

“It’s getting loads of attention from the press and TV, there will be events later in the year with local politicians so there will be government interest in it as well and we hope that this helps take that conversation forward.”

The key takeaway of the programme is engagement, giving people a stake in their immediate environment and a sense of empowerment that they have the means to make things better. “It’s more than just a voice”, adds Anderson. “There is a disenfranchisement issue which needs to be addressed but I think our experience from doing charrettes is that the challenge of doing these projects is always resources but the most valuable resource you could have is the energy of local people around a common cause and vision. If people feel that they can have an impact they will get involved and if they feel disenfranchised, they won’t.”

How did the process play out on the ground, were people enthusiastic to embrace the project or did you have to work to convince people that you had their best interests at heart? “By not going to a proposition and rather saying ‘well, what do you want it to be?’ that completely shifts the whole conversation.”

Another crucial factor behind the exhibition is that of timing, coinciding as it does with the many crises of today. With collateral damage from these events building in the form of a collapse in the retail and leisure economy coupled with unprecedented demand for active travel and green space is it now time for tough choices to finally be taken?

Anderson says: “The past year of lockdown and dislocation has shown how much people value coming together and being with other people. The other thing this year has shown is the rules can be set aside and anything is possible. From furlough to vaccine development and the fact a lot of cycle lanes appeared virtually overnight. If you walk around any town or city at the moment you will see that the pavements have been >

Above - Ewan Anderson led a Lerwick walkabout seeking responses to rising sea levels Below - Paisley’s challenges are of a different order with the community seeking ways to elevate local talent with help from 7N’s Ffion Roberts

Above - The process has also helped to bridge divides in Wester Hailes Below - Rowan MacKinnon-Pryde and Nicky Thomson of Studio Niro looked at transforming a redundant petrol station into a community dining room

colonised by people enjoying a drink without any licenses or policy development. It just happened. If the spontaneity and inventiveness that has come from that need can be channelled then the question what if can become why not?

“It will be hard for those who control these processes to say ‘that’s too difficult’ after what everyone has been through.”

With such an open-ended brief, responses inevitably come in the form of broad strokes rather than clearly defined initiatives but through all the five places a general feeling of detachment was observed. Anderson said: “There’s a definite theme of disconnection even with most of this done pre-covid. There is a strong desire for more and better quality green space and that’s tied in with the sense of wellbeing.”

Ultimately the project can shift the narrative from conversations laced with doom and gloom around store closures and the rise of the online economy to one that seeks opportunities, sparking a long-overdue rethink of how places can better serve today’s needs. “The next crisis of the pandemic will be the economic impact on town centres”, foresees Anderson. “That’s been a live issue for many years now and it’s moved from acute to critical. There are a lot of issues coming together to put town centres into A&E and we need to do something.”

With austerity set to return with a vengeance, another key aspect is to show that significant interventions need not carry a significant price tag. “The spirit of What If is not saying we have to do this. It’s saying what if we close this street off for a week and see what happens? There’s a positive tone to the wish rather than a need or requirement. It’s a positive statement with a spirit of hope. It’s non-challenging to say I have an idea to do something about this. So many of the adaptive things which have happened don’t cost anything. However, if a community has a clear idea of where it wants to go then resources can be funnelled toward that goal.

“Terry Farrell as city design champion of Edinburgh talked about visions as the picture on the jigsaw box, which means all the individual pieces are contributing toward that vision even if it might not seem so initially. People are engaged by ideas, people get enthused and that’s what drives things forward, not policy documents.”

By harnessing an innate desire to reshape the world around us and leave it in a better condition than we found it, What If shows that whether you’re ten or 80 a better tomorrow can be achieved but only for those willing to take the first step in their imaginations.

S A L T O F T H E E A R T H

THE CLIMATE CRISIS PROVIDES FERTILE GROUND FOR THE ARCHITECTURE FRINGE UNLEARNING PROGRAMME WHICH SEEKS TO UPEND THE STATUS QUO. AMONG THOSE CHAMPIONING CHANGE IS PHINEAS HARPER WHO BELIEVES THE SOLUTION TO EVER RISING CARBON EMISSIONS LIES BENEATH OUR FEET. CAN DIRT REMEDY OUR DIRTY HABITS?

The Architecture Fringe is back in action with a programme of events based on the concept of ‘unlearning’ entrenched architectural tropes to eliminate behaviours and biases affecting everything from maintenance to diversity and climate.

Running over 16 days (Un)Learning heard from practitioners including Enough!, Neil Pinder, Missing in Architecture, Migrant’s Bureau and Decolonising Architecture to match the increasingly urgent need for change with a growing desire among those in the field to do things better.

Explaining the need for intervention Fringe co-director Liane Bauer said: “The programme investigates the defining issues of our generation, from whiteness, race and capitalism, to how we use and care for the land. As built environment professionals we are asking how do we change

our behaviours and biases to work in a more ethical, holistic and sustainable way?”

Opening proceedings for with an address on (Un) caring Phineas Harper, director of Open City, made an impassioned call for architecture to be refashioned from the ground up, chiefly by rediscovering the value of earth as a construction commodity. Echoing the enthusiasm of RIBA Gold Medal Winner David Adjaye for the treasure beneath our feet (see pg 58) Harper makes the back to basics case to save the planet to save ourselves. “Of the (1,121) World Heritage Sites more than 160 are built wholly or partially from earth. For 10,000 years earth has been one of the most widely used construction materials on the planet. What’s weird is that despite its vanishingly small carbon footprint earth is almost completely absent from contemporary architecture, young architects are rarely being tutored in how to design with adobe (mudbrick), cob or rammed earth. Instead, we are generally trained to use a narrow catalogue of highly processed, carbon rich materials such as cement which accounts for 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions.”

Tackling head-on the single biggest criticism of earth, that is to say, the regular maintenance required to keep it in shape, Harper turns things around by framing this weakness as a strength. “The materials which define our built landscape have often been chosen not for their ecological value but simply to do one thing, to reduce the burden of periodic maintenance. Thatched roofs have been tiled over, green spaces paved over and tarmac poured over cobbles. In construction, there is a consensus that repairing things as little as possible is an important goal. When a material weathers badly we’re quick to chastise the architect for not having had the foresight to anticipate this deterioration and specify a more hard-wearing material.”

Citing Peter Barber’s Donnybrook in London as an example of how skewed our priorities have become Harper points to the outrage of critics who pointed to the peeling paint and flourishing mould growth as illustrative of the

The back to basics theme of the (un) programme disrupts the status quo

follies of designing bright white buildings for a damp northern climate such as the UK. “We claim that a careful architect anticipates maintenance requirements, and designs to avoid them”, he says.

“But I think this is the exact opposite of careful. To be full of care should mean to be very willing to check in with whatever we are caring for and demonstrate our care through many small acts of restoring and cultivation rather than seek to reduce our caring obligations entirely from the outset. That is not careful at all, that is careless. That is (un) care.”

Instead, Harper turns traditional arguments on their head, pointing out that a desire to not maintain and care for the fabric of buildings once they are built is can be viewed as ecologically and socially toxic. He explains: “It’s hard to think of many examples where this desire to not show acts of care is seen as a positive but it’s easy to think of the opposite.

“Think of a parent continually checking their new born child. Think of love-smitten teenagers who text and call each other hourly. Tink of the pious disciple who prays frequently to their God. Think of the gardener who must periodically prune, pick, water and weed. Metaphors aside there is a strong ecological case to turn our backs on hardwearing materials and embrace an architecture of care and maintenance.”

Reinforcing his point Harper recollects an encounter with the architects of The Darwin Centre in London’s Natural History Museum, designed by C.F. Moller in 2009, as an example of the dichotomy between rhetoric and practice. “I visited as a student and they said this giant concrete egg, 60m long and 300mm thick was sustainable and I asked ‘what makes you think this is a sustainable building?’ The answer is that it will last for 200 years. Even though it emits a lot of carbon from day 1 that’s fine because over 200 years that’s a low amount of carbon.

“It sounds sensible but it isn’t. We don’t have 200 years. We have to reduce carbon emissions now. The implications of this for architecture are profound because it means there is no good in designing tough buildings which will last a long time at the expense of emitting a lot of carbon in their construction. That’s no longer a viable model. Longevity robustness and solidity, the seductive values that we’ve associated with materials strategies over the years might have to be rethought or abandoned. The alternative to this is an architecture of care that requires constant

© LUKE O’DONOVAN

Above - Ferrybridge Power Station symbolises our long addiction to coal Below - Aberdeen provided a case study for rethinking security, rights and shelter

maintenance as a design feature.”

Looking to the future by turning to the past Harper foresees more humble forms of architecture taking root as an antidote to more recent excesses, decoupling the building trade from the global commodities market by rediscovering local resources. “Thatch is as global as people and plants. A thatch roof would need to be replaced every 10 to 15 years but ecologically it’s better to replace this roof every decade than to build it once out of concrete,” says Harper.

“The Great Mosque of Djenne in Mali is covered in protruding rods which animate the facades and act as permanent scaffolding to enable the mud exterior of this earth brick building to be repaired after heavy rains. The Toleq houses in Cameroon (a type of domed earthen home) have this beautiful geometric patterning on the surface that tapers from 30cm to just 5cm in thickness.

“This pattern is not just decorative, it is also a threedimensional ladder that allows residents to clamber over the building and repair the mud facade. Both invoke a duality, an architectural expression that is both decorative and functional.”

Conscious of the need to avoid being seen as an old stick in the mud Harper invokes the hi-tech style embodied by Norman Foster’s HSBC building in Hong Kong as an example of capitalism getting it right with its rooftop cleaning gantries accentuating the vertical thrust of the Far East city’s virile skyline. “If cleaning can be a source of architectural expression why can’t maintenance as well?

Harper concludes: “Our addiction to minimising maintenance is a toxic desire to not care. If we’re going to (un)learn things let’s unlearn that desire and embrace slow, steady incremental and constant acts of care.”

© STEVE SMITH