This year Unit H explores the future of cities: people are an increasingly urban species with the majority of the world population now living in cities. We ask how these ever-expanding cities could enable other species to thrive alongside us – and the ways in which this would be mutually beneficial, creating new strategies for urban living.

We will be working along the course of the Neckinger, one of London’s many lost rivers, uncovering the rich layers of history and use so that the past might provide clues for future architectural propositions. We will look in detail at how the physical fabric of buildings is occupied as well as how groups of people have chosen to construct alternative communities outside the mainstream of city life. We will ask what cultivation and harvesting might mean in the city and how to persuade the “Cockney” sparrow to return to its namesake.

Using both digital and analogue processes we emphasise an understanding of the proposals over time – between day and night, seasonal and longer-term cycles. This complements the unit’s ongoing interest in representations of temporal and ephemeral aspects of architecture – exploring a hybrid combination of film, sound, photography and drawing.