This LAB provided students with an opportunity to experience a large global city and to see it through a historical and urban studies framework.
The group visited a number of key localities in London, each telling a different story of London’s ongoing regeneration and how that regeneration has responded to changing visions of development and transnational relations, including imperial expansion and postcolonial migration. Some sites reflected slow, incremental urban transformation (such as immigration-led social change or gentrification) while other sites rapidly realised grand urban plans.
Over the course of this LAB, students worked in groups to create two daily “manipulated images” using Photoshop and uploaded these to their “found regeneration” website. Drawing from experiences of the week, each group created a six point regeneration coda, a set of principles by which good regeneration should proceed. At the end of the LAB, the group held a day-long charrette in which students gave oral presentations and exhibited materialised versions of their “found regeneration” images. Each group printed images created from the week and mounted them on cardboard cubes. Inside the cubes, each group placed their regeneration coda.
