Urban heat islands? Sink estates? Windswept alleys? The Mobile Mountain solves all your urban problems… for a limited season only! Read on to explore TTT’s latest riff on microclimate infrastructures…

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A full house at TINAG’s Festival of Urbanism witnessed a healthy debate over whether dystopia offers us a productive way of looking at the future. Chaired by Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today’s Darryl Chen, a strong cast of emerging and seasoned urbanists responded to the topic with an incredibly broad range of projects. Click the vid for an introduction to the theme. Full documentation will be included in a forthcoming Critical Cities volume. But for now, here are some (out of context) highlights from the discussion: (more…)

This project witnesses the result of the London Borough of Sutton’s desire to form England’s first “sustainable suburb” in the outer reaches of Greater London. What was first a twinkle in a councillor’s eye led to Sutton’s local government to write a policy document safeguarding Hackbridge as a showcase of carbon-positive living at the scale of the urban district. Sped by compulsory purchases and decanting of a small handful of resistant residents, the process gained more and more momentum until the milestone formation of the Green Grass Management Trust. First functioning as a para-governmental management arm of the fledgling district, the Green Grass MT gained in stature to be a renegade local government in its own right. As more and more people signed up to live within the confines of the newly established urban Ring, the Green Grass MT became less reliant on government subsidies and eventually became untouchable as a political entity, much to the quiet chagrin of local planners and councillors. Officially a special policy area under the umbrella authority of the borough, the Ring is now in actuality independent and self-sufficient in all respects.

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“Where The Grass Is Greener” documents a radical alternative in contemporary living, an urban infrastructure, a social experiment, a political statement…. Three thousand residents and counting. In London’s outer suburbs, a community has gathered walling themselves off from the rest of society. These postcards bear testament to their vision. (more…)

During the course of the 07/08 academic year a new school of architecture was formed in London. It was not celebrated in the university guides, it was not visible as a player in the end of year exhibition circuit but it was there lurking below the surface.  In this year Liam Young from Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today taught a design studio in 4 separate universities, choosing each studio so that together they covered every year of architectural education from first year to final year.

Although wildly unqualified for such an administrative position Liam had in effect become the head or dean of a school, albeit a new school parasitically embedded in an array of host institutions.  The school has been titled ‘The Menagerie’.  Pictured is its own end of year catalogue made from the stitched together unit pages printed from the host universities own publications. It is planned to celebrate the end of the year with a graduation roller disco.

Perhaps this is a new model for the institution, one that is exploded into fragments, camouflaged within the fabric of the city, co ordinated through blogs, txt messages and the 140 character haikus of twitter.

In the outer suburbs of London, a population has voluntarily separated themselves from the rest of society, and has taken up the mantle of sustainability in an extraordinary way. Driven by a set of ethics that places them in sometimes radical opposition to the rest of London, they have adopted a lifestyle that effectively makes them a carbon sink for the remainder of the city.

Postcards bear witness to how existing geographical patterns have been consolidated to create a giant infrastructural ring containing a series of productive and social programmes. Comprised of terraforming, hybridised architecture, natural obstructions and electronically surveilled barriers, this sophisticated urban crust is a new kind of urbanism - a fortress that protects a community of carbon-positive altruists, and reserves a place within the disorderly fabric of suburban London for pure ideology… where the grass is greener.

‘…where the grass is greener’ by Tomorrows Thoughts Today will be published in full shortly.

Barbicanism and its Errant Child refers to the critical process of urbanism as the city makes and remakes itself, and more specifically to the Barbican as a potent reference point. This project is for the Bishopsgate Goodsyard, a long vacant site in London’s inner city. The Barbican’s own ideals, aspirations and current state of post-pubescent maturity indicate how one might go about developing a large brownfield site on the fringe of the highest concentration of financial capability in the world. (more…)

Barcelona and the satellite city. Rethinking growth: Hyper-density and relational equilibrium

The project has recieved an honorable mention in the AA Prize for Unbuilt Work 2008

 you can view the reults and other entries here

This international architecture competition entry responds to a call for the rethinking of growth given a projected migration into the Barcelona region of 400,000 people over twenty years. Outcomes of the speculation are demonstrated into specific sites in Barcelona and the satellite city of Amposta, 2 hours from Barcelona by very fast train.

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