A competition submission to Wellcome Collection with design think tank Metabolic City at the London School of Architecture and Studio Egret West. Showcasing the results of our investigations into improving health and wellbeing through city design, specifically looking at London and considering how architecture and the design of the city could alleviate pressures on the NHS.
As autonomous vehicles reduce the need for personal car ownership, allowing a shift in priority in terms of road usage, can the public realm previously occupied by parked vehicles become an opportunity for new street furniture that encourage people to connect with each other and nudge people into leading more active lifestyles.
Offering a preventative approach to wellbeing rather than relying on prescriptions through city design. The resulting ideas illustrated through a 1:1 Healthy Street of the near future fabricated in a CNC cut uniform colour sheet material.
A nudge lamppost that incentives walking through an Oystercard touch reader system, bus stops reshaped to encourage eye contact start conversations, garden walls with integral bike storage, fractal pattern railings coated with pollution activated surface treatments, re-imagined road markings that encourage outdoor play, alongside parasitic lamp post play additions and see-saw benches which visitors can interact with.
Alongside the life size drawn pavement detail of bricks, drain covers and kerb stones, key statistics related to current health concerns will be CNC’d into a unifying single coloured surface.
London