Urban innovation

Faced with fast societal and environmental changes, and challenged by accelerating health and environmental crisis, now more than ever we need to stop and re-evaluate the performance of our built environment and by extend, the relevance of our design thinking.
With our spatial needs expanding and shrinking in response to continuous changes, and the surrounding landscapes shifting edges to accommodate its needs, we need to expand the narrative of designing with Nature (McHarg) and explore the notion of designing with the Ephemeral.    

By shifting our design premise from permanent to temporary, we allow new urban forms to emerge.

How are our cities responding to the temporary need of wider sidewalks to accommodate physical distancing? How are the waterfront developments responding to increasingly often tornadoes and hurricanes? Why are we still designing an environment with rigid edges when everything around us is shifting? By shifting our design premise from permanent to temporary, we allow new urban forms to emerge.

What if we challenge the established function-leads-to-form design thinking, responsible for a rigid, permanent and non-responsive urban form, and propose a new way of thinking, built on the premise that all urban and natural phenomena are ephemeral in nature. By shifting our design premise from permanent to temporary, we allow new urban forms to emerge, and a “complete street”  can become an “accordion street”, with edges that drift in response to societal needs, a parking lot is allowed to become a plaza, and so much more.