Infill-DenCity

Studio Shajay Bhooshan

Tutors Ariadna Lopez, Leo Bieling

Team Huining Zheng, Qizheng Zhang, Suman Sharma, Yiyu Xiong

Over the last hundred years, London has grown by expanding its limits which have thereby resulted in the fall of the population density in the core of the city to nearly half of what it used to be in the Victorian Era. This has resulted in extremely high costs of property in the City of London, of which a large percentage is unoccupied. Moreover, recent studies suggest that while there are only 9000 residents in the City of London, it supports the occupation of 900,000 people. 

The studio focuses on densification of London by encouraging the stakeholders’ participation in the process of design via a set of rules and expert-designed spatial technology which enables non-expert users to configure their spaces as per their needs and wants. The reasons behind densification being lower energy consumption and infrastructure costs, increase in use of public transport due to lesser commute times and a boom in local business’ revenue generation because of a larger consumer base- to name a few. In contrast to traditional methodologies of design discussion and revision coupled with planning permissions that take between 8-16 weeks for approval, this approach of interaction-driven design makes it real-time while saving resources and maintaining transparency in the process.  

Infill DenCity aims to densify a pocket of central London which comes under the height restrictions of areas surrounding the historic St. Paul’s church, bordered by the Millennium Bridge and Southwark Bridge on opposing ends. The challenge to densify while adhering to these restrictions is achieved by creating a large-scale infill- not only through filling in spaces between buildings, but also through extending the buildings horizontally, vertically and bringing back London’s lost culture of building over the bridges. The spatial technology thus responds by creating vibrant, multi-use, customizable spaces that bring work, life, and leisure closer to each other while morphing in accordance with the abutting riverfront. 

Where there is development, there are conflicts of interest. While A large Scale infill can benefit from economies of scale and increase resource utilization, it is often difficult to implement due to factors such as land acquisition. Plots owned by the community are scattered around the residential area and developers must accumulate the land parcel by parcel, while possibly experiencing resistance from landowners. In such scenario, a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) helps users to negotiate and bid via a Vickery auction. Through such means, social welfare, as well as individual benefit is maximised as the bid is closer to the real cost and interests of bidders and auctioneers are protected. Through the further development of mixed-function spaces, the benefits of agglomeration can be achieved, and urban facilities can be activated and utilized efficiently. Fill in the vacancy, infill the future dense city (DenCity)!