Emerging Territories
Emerging Territories is one of five new research groups established by the School of Architecture and Cities in 2021. It gathers together scholars working at the interface of urban planning, urbanism and architecture. It broadly focuses on big societal and environmental challenges faced by cities and territories in relationship to evolving notions of sustainability and resilience, and looking particularly at climate change, effective governance, diversity and social inclusion. Members’ research activities tackle aspects of climate adaptation, urban-rural linkages, sustainable infrastructure, landscape, green space and urban nature, the Green Recovery, urban planning and sustainable and inclusive urban design; as well as hydro-citizenship, post-human architecture, water ecologies and risks associated with coastal areas.
Alongside strategic scale work that addresses city and regional challenges, the group has an underlying interest in urban politics and emerging forms of action, such as community activism and temporary and adaptive urbanism; whilst addressing questions of cultural regeneration, heritage and sustainability, and the impact on public realm and placemaking. We adopt a wide range of methodological diversity from planning and social science approaches to environmental humanities, architecture and urban design; we explore forms of co-design and inter- and trans-disciplinarity applied to the built environment. The group covers a wide geographical scope in relation to planning, sustainable urban development and architecture from the UK to the Global South.
We have identified the following intersections as the focus of discussion for collaborative research development and invite PhD researchers in these areas: Climate Urbanism; Health, Wellbeing and Cities; Urban-Rural Interfaces; Anthropocene Territories; Public Space and Diversity.
The recording of the launch of the book Monsoon as Method: Assembling Monsoonal Multiplicities is now available on Youtube.
Lindsay Bremner has been awarded a one-year, €150,000 European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept Grant for ‘Climate Cartographics,’ a project to test the societal and commercial potential of the cartographic techniques developed during the Monsoon Assemblages project. She and two research fellows will work with the Active Travel Academy, Southwark Borough Council, Trees for Cities, and Pelagian (a sub-sea cable company) to develop pilot cartographic products using visual sensemaking and visual story-telling techniques. On the basis of these pilots and further market research, a business case for offering the services more widely to different sectors will be developed.
Lindsay Bremner has been invited to participate in and give a plenary address at a workshop titled ‘Societal Aspects of Climate Change,’ organised by the Institute for Advanced Study at KU Leuven in Belgium, 24-25 May. The workshop aims to provide a basis for exchanging views with international scientists from various non-European countries on their cultural, political and economic development conditions and on the challenges that climate change poses to their societies.
Monsoon Assemblages will launch Monsoon as Method: Assembling Monsoonal Multiplicities (Actar 2022) online on 8 June, 13.00 – 14.30 (BST). Do join us to celebrate the publication of the book.
At the launch, Lindsay Bremner, Christina Geros, Harshavardhan Bhat, Anthony Powis and John Cook will be joined by Edd Wall, Alfredo Ramirez, Karen Coelho, Pamila Gupta and Jonathan Cane to discuss the book and its methods. To attend, register using the Eventbrite link provided.
The launch of Michael Neuman’s book Sustainable Infrastructure for Cities and Societies on Marylebone Campus and online.
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88352581921?pwd=ZHZlQWVUYjlab01hQ3FXV0hKZ05pUT09
Meeting ID: 883 5258 1921
Passcode: 395845
Lindsay Bremner and an interdisciplinary and intersectoral team of researchers from India, the UK and Canada have been awarded a British Council Knowledge Frontiers: International interdisciplinary Research 2022 grant for a two-year project titled ‘Reimagining the Good City from Ennore Creek, Chennai.’
Ennore Creek is a coastal wetland and backwater of the Kosasthalaiyar River in north Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Rich with mangroves, salt flats, canals and the myriad life-forms that thrive in them, it is home to numerous fishing communities and serves as a buffer against floods and sea level rise. After the 1950s, when Chennai began associating the idea of the ‘Good City’ with industrialisation and modernisation, Ennore was rezoned for heavy polluting industries. Land-use changes and lax environmental controls resulted in pollution, coal ash leakage and dumping of toxic material into the creek, degrading its ecosystem and impacting the health and livelihoods of its communities. This project will bring together diverse communities of knowledge and practice to reimagine and rearticulate the future of the creek in the interests of local communities, in the context of permanent weather extremes, climate challenges and a state-led creek eco-restoration proposal.
Co-investigators on the project, which will run from April 2022 – April 2024 are historians Dr Bhavani Raman (University of Toronto), and Dr Aditya Ramesh (University of Manchester); anthropologist Dr Karen Coelho (Madras Institute of Development Studies); environmental chemist Dr Asif Qureshi (Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad); community activist and writer Nityanand Jayaraman and K. Saravan and Pooja Kumar (Coastal Resource Centre, Chennai).
This research is supported/funded by the British Academy’s Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary research 2022 Programme.
Image: Ennore Creek with the North Chennai Thermal Power Station in the background. Photograph: Shafeeq Ahamed S, Age 17, 2022.
The ‘Emerging Territories’ Research Group will host a one-day symposium on current research initiatives in the School of Architecture and Cities, at the interface between London-based explorative practices, and globally-relevant projects.
Planetary Assemblages brings together the work of Monsoon Assemblages and the Manifest Data Lab to visualise geophysical and atmospheric data as ways of making climate change perceptible and public. Through drawings, maps, animations and models saturated with data from multiple sources, it proposes a critical engagement with the power of art and design to explore connections with the climate crisis and to motivate awareness of the material, social and cultural ways we are implicated in it.
The project is initiated by the Emerging Territories Research Group: Krystallia Kamvasinou and Giulio Verdini (Co-Convenors), and Ripin Kalra (Member). We capitalise on previous projects on green space in London and the Covid19 health emergency, and climate urbanism and resilience. Cross-disciplinary co-investigators are: Rachel Aldred (Transport), Nina Smyth (Psychology), Linda Percy (Biological Sciences), Corinna Dean (Architecture).
The opening of Monsoonal Multiplicities, the online exhibition by the European Research Council funded project, Monsoon Assemblages. Speakers were historian Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons have Shaped South Asia’s History and landscape architect Dilip da Cunha, author of The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Ganga’s Descent.
In Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Daniel Barber and Anton Vidokle eds. Accumulation: The Art, Architecture and Media of Climate Change, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2022.
In Yangon, Myanmar, displays of conspicuous wealth adorn high-end real estate developments located at strategic downtown intersections and clustered around the city’s famous Kandawgyi and Inya lakes. Research in 2019 exposed the links between much of this high-end real estate and jade extraction in northern Kachen State. The chapter analyses these relations.
