How can one respond to the climate crisis through the discipline of art and design? London Create in collaboration with Material Cultures and architect Yasmeen Lari aim to do just that with their project ‘Rising from the Water: Designing in a Climate Emergency’.
As the risk of climate change heightens yearly, so does the threat of flooding. In response, Create London asked Professor Yasmeen Lari and Materials Cultures to explore sustainable solutions to flood resilience with a community of emerging architects in East London.
Create London commissions socially engaged art and infrastructure to local communities whilst Materials Cultures is a design and research practice working at the intersection of natural materials, and low-embodied-carbon construction technology.
Pakistan’s first female architect Professor Yasmeen Laris is an architectural historian, conservationist and philanthropist. Her work driving Pakistan’s efforts to achieve zero-carbon architecture for the masses was rewarded in 2023 with RIBA’s Royal Gold Medal.
The collaboration takes the form of an experiential architecture project called ‘Rising from the Water: Designing in a Climate Emergency’. Beginning with a 7-day workshop and culminating in a temporary installation, the project explores how to build in cohesion with the land in wet and flooded areas by drawing upon industrial heritage.
Run in tandem with the London Festival of Architecture, the workshop will involve early career and student architects coming together to construct a temporary structure using plants and other natural materials that might form the future of design.
In particular, the participating young architects will be taught the skills required to assemble and utilise locally sourced bio-based willows and reeds, as building material.
The result will be displayed in Barking, a Thames-side borough in East London susceptible to flooding.
Historically speaking, the most devasting event to have hit the area was the ‘Great Flood’ in 1953 when a factory settlement of approximately 50 homes named Creekmouth village, was submerged in three feet of water after the East of England was hit by storms from the North Sea.
‘Rising from the Water: Designing in a Climate Emergency’ looks to the future to find a sustainable and enduring architectural solution for flood-risk areas.
A creative and educational activity, the project aims to raise awareness of the relationship between the climate crisis and our industrial heritage.
The installation will be on display until the end of June.
