Buildings Category
Design buildings like sandwich boxes?
Posted on February 23, 2022 Leave a Comment
This post is taken from my reply to Peter Madden’s LinkedIn thinkpiece: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/professor-peter-madden-obe-b5684020_futuresthinking-fridayfuturesinsight-activity-6900394364888322048-CIrf The silver lining of COVID is that it’s exposing the links between where we live and how we live, whether that’s the exercise we get/or don’t get from the ways we now travel to work or the windows we open once we […]
Choosing the office of the future: a time for quality, not quantity
Posted on November 23, 2020 Leave a Comment
Released today, Deloitte Real Estate’s London Office Crane Survey reports a 50% reduction in the construction of new office space in central London in six months. Yet even such a significant reduction in supply may not be enough to offset a greater reduction in demand. As a result, there is likely to be an oversupply of office […]
No board rooms, no desks. The office of the future…
Posted on April 24, 2020 1 Comment
Images of future offices, with physically distanced workstations to separate desk-bound workers, seem to miss the point. Offices aren’t for staying apart – they’re for coming together. But how can that be organised in a post-COVID world? Offices have desks because we’ve long thought that people couldn’t or shouldn’t work from home. Attitudes were changing […]
Silver linings: how design can exploit the virus
Posted on April 13, 2020 2 Comments
A “to do” list for urban planners, architects & interior designers, in response to the coronavirus. In towns & cities: reduce traffic speeds to 20mph/30kph to discourage speeding on empty streets during lockdown & to keep the air clean, the sound low & the accidents down after the “return”. On wide streets: broaden footways to […]
Integrated Urban Planning – balancing the multiple flows of the city
Posted on September 26, 2015 2 Comments
Notes for the UK-China Sustainable Urbanisation Conference in Chengdu, China on 24th September 2015 My job as an architect and urban planner is to design new towns and cities – as well as new parts of existing urban settlements. This means designing the multiple systems that make up a city. We often think about towns and […]
What did the Romans ever do for us? Pompei’s 5 lessons for placemaking…
Posted on February 5, 2015 1 Comment
Download the presentation In looking forwards it is important to learn the lessons of history. Look at Pompei. A city built for efficient mobility. A model of the 1st century with lessons for the 21st century. The grid – no cul de sacs. Built for mobility. Built for commerce. More or less rectilinear – not labyrinthine. […]
Space Syntax City Projects Walk
Posted on September 6, 2013 2 Comments
On Tuesday afternoon, 3rd September, I led a walking tour of built projects by Space Syntax. Trafalgar Square Royal Festval Hall Tate Modern One New Change New Bloomberg Headquarters (under construction) Willis Building 30 St Mary Axe Heron Plaza (under construction) Liverpool Street Station retail concourse Broadgate, Exchange Square Barbican Arts Centre
MSc Advanced Architectural Studies – graduate employability
Posted on September 6, 2013 2 Comments
A talk given at the 40th Anniversary celebrations of the MSc in Advanced Architectural Studies – the “space syntax” MSc at University College London, 3rd September 2013. Good evening, everyone. Let me begin by paying tribute to the genius of Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson. Not only for pioneering a theory – the theory – of […]
Old Street – putting the genie back in the bottle?
Posted on December 6, 2012 3 Comments
Old Street Roundabout is a heady intersection of urban movement flows: on foot, on cycles and in vehicles, including the Tube. But it is currently a mess, out of place within the surrounding network of generally convivial streets. In order to appreciate the severely negative condition of the place you only have to walk to […]
Going to “work” is actually going to “interact”
Posted on September 6, 2012 Leave a Comment
Why is people movement important in buildings? In a knowledge economy, the key role of buildings is the production and dissemination of new knowledge to drive innovation. Awareness leads to interaction leads to transaction. Spatial layout works with management style to create a “spatial culture”. Corner offices v corridors People should sit based on need […]
A short film about Space Syntax
Posted on May 12, 2012 Leave a Comment
Tim Stonor, Managing Director, Space Syntax “The population of the world is increasing and, as it increases, more and more of us are living in cities. As cities have grown in the 20th century they have often grown to disconnect people. Space Syntax has discovered that many of these problems in cities – disconnection, lack […]
The power of the network 