Future By Design Protostructure

The project was designed and built in the summer of 2021 in the run-up to COP26, alongside a sister project in Accra, Ghana.

Arc brought together an interdisciplinary group of young designers from the Glasgow School of Art and Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh to explore the future of architecture in an era of climate crisis, in partnership with a parallel group in Ghana.

What emerged through a series of workshops was a zero-carbon, innovative timber gridshell protostructure imitating the conditions of the lost Scottish Rainforest, a generative strategy of environmental renewal for a degraded, post-farming landscape. A learning space rests on repurposed concrete foundations, with furniture grown from mycelium and agro-waste.

Built mainly by the students themselves, the project tested the boundaries of contemporary design and construction practice to address systemic issues of current gender inequality and historic racism. It focused on the challenges that young designers will face in their careers to 2050 and the leadership and cooperation needed to deliver change.

Both countries found they faced similar challenges of flooding from climate change and developed localised responses through community partnerships. Strategies to cope with increasing rainfall in west Scotland signpost a future zero-carbon and resource-equal construction sector.

Delivered in the midst of Covid, this was an extraordinarily challenging project for all involved. The experience and learning gained was the main outcome, the structure a physical manifestation of the power of creativity and cooperation as an Architectural response to climate crisis. Chris Stark, CEO of the UK Climate Change Committee described it as 'a structure that represents the change that we have to go through'.

Please watch our short film at https://youtu.be/7N-CIvcOCiU