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At AJ, we know architects can bring clear thinking to complex problems and the ability to see the big picture. You are the connectors, enablers and instigators of positive change.
That’s why we’re excited to launch Blueprints for Change, a new platform to discover and publish proposals from architects and others in the built environment to solve the most pressing social and environmental challenges. As Will Hurst explains in the introduction, we want to emphasize “your ability to problem-solve, think laterally, and question the status quo.”
The first is 5th Studio director Tom Holbrook’s bold proposal for The Arc—a 100-mile public landscape centered around water. Modeled on a crescent of water- and natural-resource-poor land between Oxford and Cambridge, the ambitious proposal envisions “a multifunctional landscape: a place for both water collection and recreation; impenetrable a landscape and a landscape for human habitation; a landscape that expands the diversity of nature, a landscape that provides conditions for settlements within it”.
The approach rethinks our relationship with nature through an architectural lens. It recognizes the real need for human development but presents the opposite perspective to what usually happens, where “infrastructure projects are built to solve specific problems and landscape is conceived as a uniform covering that improves and masks the solution” .
“Big” doesn’t necessarily mean imposed from the top down. “Foresight” does not need to be overridden and enforced. Of course, big, visionary thinking can lead to both good and negative consequences.
But through generous, open-minded citizen intervention, much can be improved. Cristina Monteiro’s inspiring column explores the social value of architecture and how, by any measure, this value is multiplied by its longevity, locality and commitment.
Whatever your politics, it’s clear that the dangerous state of England’s school buildings requires radical, visionary (and financial) intervention, and fast. While bold budget changes are made at the macro level with the stroke of a pen, every crumbling classroom is a local micro tragedy. See page 10 for Anna Highfield’s in-depth look at how we got here and where we’re going.
Good, thoughtful school design can change a child’s life. Schools (like water) are critical elements of our infrastructure, not just coverings that hide problems. Starting with each child as an individual and considering each child’s needs for nurturing and growth can help solve seemingly insurmountable problems. This might mean creating a vibrant civic building on a narrow urban site (see Rivington Street Studio’s Oasis Academy in Silver City); or supporting those whose lives have been affected by trauma through access to nature (Lord Monte Loader Monteith’s new woodland center for the Harmeny Education Trust near Edinburgh).
The best ideas, like children, grow and hopefully thrive. We look forward to your blueprint for change.
Subscribers can read the January issue here or purchase it from the AJ Store
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