| Type | Speculative scenario |
|---|---|
| Year | 2011 |
London has a longstanding history in urban rejuvenation and the city counts many ongoing projects. One of the most ambitious is the VNEB, set to renew the area between Vauxhall and Battersea over the next years, with the erection of nearly ten new towers going from 100 to 200 meters high.
Urban planning and regeneration projects usually benefit local residents, new comers, and of course developers. And these also come with a well-known set of negative impacts in the long term: gentrification and the loss of certain social and ethnic groups, rapid and profound shifts in the area's nature and identity, etc. Every project has also its specificities with direct or short-term consequences that stakeholders often underweight.
Shades of Vauxhall is a project exploring one particular aspect of these impacts: the potential loss of direct sunlight in the areas around the future constructions. First, a device allows to evaluate shadow overcastings from the future buildings, then a software program gives the possibility to reverse engineer shadows to shape constructions in an optimised way.
Device
It helps people to understand how the cast shadows of the future buildings will potentially affect local residents. A lamp is mounted on an arc and can rotate around a spherical path in order to imitate the sun movements. The left cursor sets the month of the year and the right one controls the time of the day. One can see that some residents and areas of Vauxhall are likely to loose up to a few hours of direct sun light every day.
Software application
This program enables people to define an exclusion space for the developers to build constructions that cast less shadows. The user creates zones where casted shadow should be restricted. A graph is used to set the direct sun exposure desired for each of these zones throughout the year. From this, the software's engine outputs a three-dimensional exclusion space. Local residents can go to the local authorities as well as developers and present them a very concrete counter-proposal for the architects to use in designing buildings for the VNEB.
Footnotes
On the relevance of the project: one could argue that England is rarely sunny anyway.
About the title: it is inspired by The Clash song Guns of Brixton.
Cast shadow study of the VNEB: a summer day from 7am to 7pm
Cast shadow simulation device: general view
Cast shadow simulation device: closeup view
Setting areas and time zones: direct sun times for Vauxhall Park
Generating exclusion building space: consented / optimised for the park