John Bushell of Kohn Pedersen Fox reflects on the New London Agenda and how we can collectively contribute to London's future as a city of equity, sustainability, and prosperity.

London, as the beautiful Abercrombie and Forshaw map of 1941 shows, is a conglomeration of villages and three cities (The City, Westminster, and Southwark) that form a resilient, multi-centred global city of unique character.

 

The villages of London, mixed-use communities of legible scale, weathered Covid well. The central areas of social enjoyment and entertainment have bounced back. But the areas of greatest work-centred monoculture, the engines of the economy, have had the hardest and slowest recovery. These areas need reinvention and renewal to become diverse, social, mixed-use places. With density already established, these areas can provide a greater intensity and contribute to the revitalisation of the city as a whole, helping create a diverse economy with resilience to change.

 

Covid blurred the effects of Brexit, which was partially a protest that not everyone had enjoyed the benefits of economic prosperity the EU had brought. It was a wakeup call to look at social inequality, acute housing shortages, and how to make a more inclusive city. To tackle these issues, we need to provide new housing, social infrastructure, and opportunities.

 

However, London, like all global cities, faces an escalating environmental threat, including flooding and overheating. The climate crisis challenges whether we should be building anything new at all.

 

The NLA’s New London Agenda asks how, within this setting at a pivot point in the history of cities, we can collectively contribute to London's future as a city of equity, sustainability, and prosperity.

 

To be prosperous a city needs to continue to change, evolve and be relevant. Its workplaces and homes vigorously renewed. We need to find the best ways to continue to build. This starts with the assumption that we should keep everything we can, to preserve embodied carbon. Not to keep it the same, but to amend, extend and transform existing fabric into something that makes a new contribution to the city. In the next phase of London's evolution, we can create hope for the future and achieve the renewal of our built fabric within stringent carbon parameters. Learning from London’s diverse origins, we should be re-enforcing its constituent cities of global significance and mixed-use villages at an intensity that allows London to flourish.

 

With sustainable prosperity comes the hope that we can create a more equitable city with good social purpose. Achieved through the physical improvements provided by development, and by directly and widely sharing the benefits of development. This requires new partnerships between developers, businesses, local authorities and communities, and new frameworks to make it happen. Pioneers are already creating these partnerships.

 

An example of a project that keeps, amends, and builds upon the carbon already on a site, is KPF's Panorama St Paul's at 81 Newgate Street in the City.  The development, to which HSBC is relocating its global headquarters, will affect a radical transformation of the building’s potential. While 65% of the existing structure is retained, new elements double the overall area of the building and allow the creation of a contemporary workplace with an open, permeable base, mixed mode ventilation, terraces, and a roof garden, all set on a new London square. By using the existing building as a quarry, very little new stone is needed as almost all the existing Portland stone is reused. As modelled, its carbon performance exceeds 2030 targets and NABERS 5* is being targeted to measure how it performs post occupancy.

 

In London, to create buildings of height, KPF are retaining older buildings and adding taller elements at 99 City Road and Seventy Gracechurch Street, learning from two New York projects; Hudson Commons and One Madison. Threading the new loads through the existing structure creates a hybrid old-and-new project of imaginative reinvention with city-leading carbon performance and offering an exciting variety of space.

 

There is a discipline to making this typology successful. Through decades of experience - from the World Bank Headquarters in Washington DC to 100 Blackfriars and South Bank Tower in London, KPF believes the "Keep, Amend, Add, Transform" approach balances sustainability and positive evolution - a perfect response to the NLA's challenge. There is no limit to the invention and ingenuity that can be applied to this typology.

 

In parallel, we are working with clients and councils to create spaces and places within buildings that integrate with the wider community and make them more accessible to the city as a whole. This is accompanied by active commitments for economic and social usefulness for those who need it most. For example, in Southwark, we are proposing affordable artists' studios, medical incubator space, and community space. Going well beyond minimum required provisions, an initiative with Good People will actively find and connect those in need with employment opportunities.  

 

We have the same active intent being codified for projects in Islington and Hackney. At One Crown Place we proposed affordable workspace in a reused existing building - well ahead of it becoming policy. The City must allow for a broad mix of sizes and types of business, to allow as much diversity as possible, to create innovation and share prosperity.  

 

This echoes a one nation approach of previous eras where development acted with social purpose as part of a broader understanding that everyone in a city needs hope and success for the city to be successful overall.

 

The transformational approach is just as relevant to the provision of homes, an acute issue in London. The quick adaptation of existing floorplates leads to a simple yet fundamental question of what makes a good dwelling. Much recent residential development has been built to "minimum standards" that were not intended to be a full definition of a flat, and the standard of homes has been very mixed. The recent revisions to the GLA Guidance are the start of a pathway to much better residential design. At the Bermondsey Biscuit Factory, where we reimagined a large existing factory building into a mixed-use hub, using very detailed analysis, we created a family of new and varied layouts to maximise the daylight and perceptual amenity of every flat in a large new scheme. Great care was taken to create a range of residential typologies that cater to a diverse population.

 

In addition, we are arguing for alternative acceptable mixes and prices to challenge the current single route of Affordable Housing. The current model forces up the price of the rest of the development, which subsidises the ‘Affordable’ housing. We are suggesting that this excludes most of the people in the middle and that schemes where the prices of most of the units relates to the average income of the borough, and are therefore affordable to many, should be a possible alternative route.

 

And, as a final plea, all roofs should contribute to urban greening and biodiversity to compliment larger planting at ground level. This requires a rethink of the distribution of mechanical systems (which should be being minimised anyway). This approach is integrated into all our projects.

 

A primary role of the city is to create the setting for creative interaction and vigorous sustainable living. We need to continue to renew and change while accepting stringent carbon limitations to see a flourishing London.