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Studio Urban Ecologies sought to do more than be sustainable and believed as architects we needed to consider the ways building and cities can be regenerative. We aimed to engage with the natural world to consider an urbanism that is inspired by and works with the existing ecosystem.

We began at Lesnes Abbey Woods in an area of ancient woodland. At 88 hectares it covers woodlands and parklands, here the natural regeneration of the woodland can be appreciated alongside the preservation work of its Abbey ruins and fossil beds, Conservation here is considered in terms of the ecological and historical.

Across the B213 road from the Abbey ruins is Thamesmead, a 1960s utopian vision turned into Kubrick’s dystopian future, and in 2020-2021 given another chance of reinvention by a housing association working in partnership with a private developer.

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Thamesmead was originally planned around canals and lakes as the Greater London Council (GLC) took radical Swedish planning ideas in the belief that such ‘natural’ water features had a calming affect on residents to reduce crime and vandalism. Peabody hoped to rewild these water features and add to the existing landscape.

We applaud this green intent, but as a studio as we progressed through the year, as we engaged with the community, we hoped to find other and more meaningful ways we could design with the natural world, to achieve a balance of stable biodiversity and resource consumption that was both restorative and meaningful to the diverse communities of Abbey Wood and Thamesmead.

Studio tutor

Wai Piu Wong

Studio collaborators

Louisa Bowles, Hawkins Brown
Sean Bradley, GroundWorks
Jack Gower, Peabody
Nicola Murphy-Evans, CLEVER Cities, GLA
Greg Nordberg, Engineers HRW
Teodor Perfanov, KPT Design Ltd.
Lindsey Weaver, Ian Holt, Lesnes Abbey Woods, LB Bexley