London’s talented designers can fix the city
As the London Design Festival returns this week, we are reminded that our city has the world’s largest design community that is ready to step in and reinvent the capital.
The pandemic has not just part-closed the city, it has significantly changed attitudes too. This is such a concern for city administrators that scenario-planning includes a return to offices of only 25 per cent. This means an immediate re-think of how we live and use London. We should see it not as a problem, but as an opportunity that must be grasped.
Retail has been in decline for 20 years and while consumer behaviour has changed, planning has not. Local authorities still require ground-floor retail in development schemes destined to remain empty — one reason why government has proposed a radical deregulation of planning. Concerns have been rightly raised about developers creating slum-like micro and windowless units. But adaptive re-use of spaces is the revolution we have been waiting for. Innovative design solutions can bring vitality to neighbourhoods with a variety of uses that serve the community first.
What will be new is an abundance of empty offices. Every major employer is rethinking their space needs and we risk a ghost town in Zone 1. Offices can be made into anything given the opportunity and property companies will soon be seeking new solutions as the market enters its biggest adjustment in a lifetime.
What will be new is an abundance of empty offices. This is an opportunity – they can be made into anything
A benefit of home-working has been a local revival. Designers can help improve the distinctiveness of neighbourhoods through a variety of interventions. In 1992 for the Barcelona Olympics, the mayor of the city created a network of micro public squares. Beautifully designed and heavily used, they gave identity to neighbourhoods. London needs such an initiative today.
Rush hour has become an old and tired concept too. Flexible working should eradicate that alongside a move towards greater diversity of transport. We are past peak car ownership with a generation not even bothering to learn to drive. Redesigning our mobility needs and reinventing our streets is a necessity.
Designers have the imagination to make London the best place in the world to live and a blueprint for other cities. But the Government must act first. I call on them to create an ambitious innovation fund that asks the big questions. Designers are ready to respond. Hand over the city to us and we will help fix it.
Ben Evans is director and co-founder of the London Design Festival
