- Bridging the gap
- Designing in the wake of coronavirus
- University tech
- Living employment
- Atlas – Tech City statement
- Four ways residential design might change after COVID-19
- Coal Drops Yard – creating a new retail destination
- Post COVID-19 – What’s next for higher education design?
- Inspiring Girls
- Stephen Wiltshire
- The future of retail and workplace
- Make models: The Cube
- International Women’s Day 2020
- Architectural Drawing: States of Becoming
- One Make
- Interview with Sarah O’Hara
- Bringing the brand back to life
- Post-COVID
- The Architecture Drawing Prize exhibition reviewed
- Jack Sallabank interviews Ibrahim Ibrahim, Managing Director of Portland Design
- ‘Architecture in the frame’ – London Art Fair
- A Hong Kong perspective on a post COVID-19 society
- Chadstone Link: Making new connections
- Improving social ties in our cities
- Design narratives and community bonds
- Education Q&A
- Behind the scenes at the 2019 World Architecture Festival
- Drawing on the culture that makes the buildings
- Future modelmakers 2020
- The City is Yours
- After coronavirus, how can we accelerate change in workplace design to improve connection and wellbeing?
- Ask the Makers
- The Madison model by Theodore Polwarth
- Q&A with our student modelmakers: Theodore Polwarth
- The Teaching and Learning Building model by James Picot
- Q&A with our student modelmakers: James Picot
- Pablo Bronstein
- The Big Data Institute model by Finlay Whitfield
- Q&A with our student modelmakers: Finlay Whitfield
- Hospitality: Business as usual, or is it?
- Encouraging spaces of conviviality
- The importance and passion of heritage in the built environment
- No show, so what next?
- Choosing architectural modelmaking
- Make Roundtable
- Exchange Issue No. 3 Education and Research – Foreword
- State of the market – Hong Kong
- World Heritage Day 2020
- Make models: Agora Budapest
- Knowledge Exchange and Social Connection
- Interview with Julian Robinson
- Interview with Peter McGeorge
- Drawing in Architecture
- Interview with Dr Julie Wells
- Photo Essay
- Interview with Siu-Man Fung
- The university of the future
- Campus and the City
- Draw in order to see
- Universities reshaping London
- Interview with Hong Kong Design Institute’s Joseph Wong
- Project delivery at 80 Charlotte Street
- Students speak
- Our commitment to sustainable design
- Asta House – Local living in Fitzrovia
- The next generation of retail brands
- Interview with Stephen Talboys
- Make models: Chadstone Link
- Transparency and a sense of investment
- Langlands and Bell – Observing and Observed
- Wellbeing in the university landscape
- Telling Stories: The power of drawing to change our cities
- Musings on The Architecture Drawing Prize 2020
- What role will hotels play in our society after COVID?
- Sketchbooks: draw like nobody’s watching
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- Museum for Architectural Drawing, Berlin
- Make models: 20 Ropemaker Street, part 2
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- Interview with Lendlease’s Natalie Slessor
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- Interview with Brookfield Properties’ Stuart Harman
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- Living with loneliness
- Combatting loneliness in the built environment
- Wellbeing and the workplace
- Interview with Brookfield Properties’ Peter Clarke
- An update from Sydney
- Retail innovation beyond the shop door: Lessons from the USA (part 1)
- Make Roundtable
- Make models: 20 Ropemaker Street, part 3
- Sydney born and razed
- Interview with Argent’s Nick Searl
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- Connecting people and places
- Make models: 20 Ropemaker Street, part 1
- Retail innovation beyond the shop door: Lessons from the USA (part 3)
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- Interview with Lendlease’s Kevin Chapman
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- Curious Sir Christopher Wren
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- The socio-economic value of people-focused cities
Encouraging spaces of conviviality
Last year I participated in the Loneliness Lab, an initiative to design out loneliness in London. Hosted by Collectively in partnership with Lendlease, this week-long design sprint saw 32 participants prototype and test ideas across local communities in the London Borough of Southwark.
The week kicked off with a day-long exploration of the issue to help us to understand and reframe loneliness in our minds as a public health epidemic that’s as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Faced with the complexity of the issue, we were then oriented to think about the built environment and urban public spaces as fertile ground for interventions. We formed teams and embarked upon a week-long experimentation around a chosen sub-theme.
My team headed to East Street Market, Walworth, to observe how people were interacting with each other and the place. We asked one simple question: ‘What did you do the last time you felt lonely?’ This opened up plenty of conversation, and we discovered that the community felt the market had been blighted by rapid regeneration, the consequent displacement of local people, and a lack of investment into the market and its traders. It became evident how much this open-air market means to local people socially, culturally and even psychologically. One person we spoke to stated:
Whenever I feel lonely, I go outside and connect with new people on this street, even if it’s to start an argument with someone. Whatever you can’t change, let it go. Free yourself.
The underlying message in this for me was how important it is to have the freedom to find human connection without needing access or permission. It highlighted the significance of streets and open-air markets as spaces of conviviality, especially against backdrops of displacement in which people are experiencing a slow erosion of familiarity with their local environment and, subsequently, their sense of belonging. One thing the people on East Street had in common, whether conscious or subconscious, was the freedom to roam their streets in the knowledge and even expectation that at some point they would find serendipitous interaction with others.
The experience showed us how big a role the animated and personable market traders and shopkeepers play in facilitating such a vibrant place. Once we realised this, we could identify design opportunities to support their role as hosts of the market’s social fabric.
A prevailing question in my mind since the Loneliness Lab has concerned the design conditions needed to facilitate these sorts of cultures in our streets, neighbourhoods, and places where the social and cultural fabric are in decay. What does it take to revitalise open spaces of conviviality?
We’ve had the privilege to think deeply about these challenges through seven years of research, development and experimentation at Impact Hub Birmingham, taking a systemic approach anchored by people and place. This journey has led us to a new venture: Civic Square, a bold approach to visioning, building and investing in civic infrastructure for future neighbourhoods.
By considering the role of physical architecture and the built environment alongside social and institutional architecture, and by designing business models that are interdependent and regenerative, I believe we can design in a deep interconnectedness across local ecosystems to help address the challenges of loneliness.
This post was extracted from Kinship in the City, a report on urban loneliness and the built environment by Make’s research arm, the Future Spaces Foundation. Read and download the report in full at www.futurespacesfoundation.org.