B.A.O

Studio Shajay Bhooshan

Tutors Ariadna Lopez, Leo Bieling

Team Taikhum Shaikh, Yatharth Thakkar, Yixin Zhu, Yuqian Liu

Urban development and densification tend to act decisively in human socialisation. They can form a connecting bridge for interdisciplinary agencies for mutual benefit and create the space of social condensation, cultural acceleration, and economic efficiency. 

London is the perfect testbed for densification since it already possesses qualities of a megacity, such as extensive transport infrastructure, high employment ratio, diversified culture, and others. At the same time, London is characterised by an extensive urban sprawl due to the Not In My BackYard – NIMBY – attitude of the communities opposing any construction in their neighbourhood resulting in city’s further expansion. Additionally, London’s urban territory includes 47% green spaces which aren’t utilised effectively as majority of the time they remain empty without any public interaction. Thus, our proposal Backyard Autonomous Organization - B.A.O. - augments the use of such backyards in a productive manner, through shared platform achieving user consensus through community participation.   

B.A.O. acts as a decentralised organization where locals and professionals as a collective realise various architectural proposals, including the negotiation of their financial aspects to ensure its maximum social welfare. Two major aspects of B.A.O. incentivise users to densify the neighbourhood by expanding the green spaces. The first is the governance technology that provides an interactive participatory platform, as a decentralised game for buyers and local authorities to negotiate the land purchase. The second aspect relates to the spatial geometries allowing these negotiations to occur digitally. These geometries are structurally optimal, resulting in cost-effective mass customisation possibilities.   

B.A.O. incorporates a cyber-physical participatory platform, wherein, local users and new buyers, virtually regulate and simulate the designs provided by the professionals. This safeguards the best possible solutions to maximise the users’ self-interest and importantly increases social welfare in the neighbourhood. Our proposal offers an autonomous architectural solution to enhance the density of London neighbourhoods, through virtual and physical negotiation systems and spatially intelligent design strategies.