LONDON IS . . . .

Exhibition, London Pavilion, Seoul Biennale, Korea

Location: Seoul Korea
Curators: Peter Bishop, Isabel Allen
Collaborators: HNNA Ltd, Foster + Partners, Studio Egret West, Weston Williamson + Partners, 8FOLD, dRMM, 5th Studio, IF_DO, Hildrey Studio, PiM Studio.

[ URBAN DESIGN / INFRASTRUCTURE / EDUCATION / CIVIC / RESEARCH ]
[ 1901 ]

HNNA was one of ten practices invited to participate in the London exhibition for the Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism.

'Collective Cities' seeks to question how modes of collective practice and action can challenge the current paradigms of development of our cities and offer resistance to the dominant systems of spatial production. The biennale seeks to reflect on new models of co-existence, social practice, governance, research and speculation, to suggest alternative concepts of architecture, the city and the environment and to interrogate architecture's political agency.

We are now on the cusp of a Fourth Industrial Revolution that will be characterised by a fusion of technologies that will blur the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres. The current speed of these breakthroughs is changing almost every aspect of our lives. London is a city of constant adaptation, which is why it has remained one of the major cities in the world. In this exhibition we will consider London’s key strengths and attributes that it will need to develop in order to remain a paradigm of urban living in the 21st Century; a city that celebrates intense human interaction.

London is . . . a city to get lost in

Cities need a shift in telos, from honed factories of production to playgrounds for social interaction.

The wisdom of the crowd is in the freedom of the individual.

In an age routinely denounced as selfishly individualistic we are increasingly dictated to and controlled. Media, manufacturing, global financial markets and regulation are rapidly homogenising and regularising our cities. Distinction comes from acts of defiance. 

Prescriptive design obliviates the joy of the accidental, of the unusual. If we return to the concept of the city as maze, in which to be enjoyably lost, it will become again a site of discovery and learning. The medieval embrace of the organic, the irregular, the willful which founded London can maintain its distinctive pulse today. 

The city should proffer the ideals of an equitable, inclusive society with all its inherent eclecticism. The choice to belong or to reject, to fit in or to stand out, to be part of or to be alone.

“Lost is a lovely place to find yourself.” 

Michael Faudet, Dirty Pretty Things

We are exhibiting in the London Pavilion at the Seoul Biennale 2019

We are one of ten architectural practices asked to contribute a proposition to describe what London needs to continue to do for it to remain the leading global city, through and beyond the middle of this century.