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London 2062: Bartlett students and academics in new UCL book
25 November 2013
Paranoia House by Arthur Kay
London’s development has always eluded prediction, but a new UCL publication aims to confront the challenges of a rapidly growing city with a series of forecasts and solutions for the capital in 50 years’ time.
Imagining the Future City: London 2062 brings together a coalition of world-leading experts in urban planning, geography, politics, engineering, computer science and policy with contributions from Bartlett staff and alumni across the faculty.
The book also features the winning entries from a student competition calling for creative responses to the question of the capital’s future. Arthur Kay, who graduated from The Bartlett School of Architecture last year, was one of the winners with his Paranoia House, a fictional building that protects its occupants from all imaginable crises, from terrorist attacks to financial meltdown.
Arthur explains his approach to the competition: “In general we need to take a much more measured approach towards the future, and Paranoia House is an appeal to reason, poking fun at the hysteria that is too often used to grab headlines". He cites his interest in psychoanalysis as an inspiration for his entry: “the relationship between design and the human psyche has always fascinated me, and in projects such as Paranoia House I have looked at this notion within an architectural framework”.
London 2062 approaches the challenges of the future from four different angles, the city’s networks, its material aspects and its structures of power and governance. The final section, entitled ‘Dreams’, contains pieces of a more speculative and often playful nature. Far from being whimsical, these pieces are underpinned by formal research and the rich knowledge base of their authors.
For more information and a free PDF download of the book, visit the London 2062 website.