The way we make space in 21st century London is shaped through global consumption. The city is less a place to innovate your industry – more a place to hold your assets. In a metropolis that is ‘full' your back yard is in demand - banked as speculation, bartered for a return, and borrowed in the meantime to have a purpose. Everyone can feel powerless against this well-oiled machine of change.

Construction has been managed into a foregone conclusion – such and such at a certain rate defines the quantum. An architect’s service has been streamlined to manage the gestural implications of each crucial yet crude balance struck between the developer and the city politician. As predicted 30 years prior the semiotic skin slips onto a frame that could hold any number of pepper potted tenure blind ever less affordable uses.

It’s a place where appearances matter – and the new breed of place makers work hard tidying up the edges and the in-betweens of the main property prize – making a new type of conversation with the many local voices, less profitable needs and bottom up opportunities of the city.

Join Tom Coward (AOC Architecture Ltd) as he explores the question - Why design in the 21st Century?