This is the first decade in history in which the majority of the global population live in urban areas. Cities as we know them are changing. As our economy moves further away from a manufacturing base toward service and knowledge based sectors, the city is no longer a place of ma- terial production. In an attempt to revise the trend of urban de-industrialisation, my work explores the city as a resource that can provide the raw materials for the production of goods. It proposes ways in which local materials and localised manufacture can allow new, lightweight industries to be reintroduced to the city. This concept is explored through three interlinking themes.

Harvest City

The city can provide new forms of raw material. With the majority of London’s waste shipped abroad for recycling, Harvest city looks at ways to stem this trend and proposes new uses for the surplus of stuff. Encouraging the development of a new surplus economy that embraces regional and seasonal difference plays a key role in shaping design process. Part opportunist foraging and part analytical mapping and process based production, harvested and foraged material such as old newspapers and second hand gold jewellery form the basis for a series of prod- uct collections.

Trade City

Here, a series of speculative environments in which the Harvest City produce can be formally processed are proposed. Developed in response to the de-industrialisation of the urban landscape, the project imagines new forms that contemporary industry may have to take if it is to play a part in shaping the cities of the future. The concept promotes a design-orientated, micro-scale industry that can develop locally sourced raw material into locally manufactured products, inspired by the temporary infrastructure that supports the construction industry. Their temporary nature is intended to be a realistic attempt to alleviate the disruption that larger production facilities can have on an area.

Trade Land

Trade land explores the motivation to make. As British manufacturers struggle to compete economically with manufacturing from the Far East, MADE IN ENGLAND is a badge that is increasingly hard to find on products. If designers opt out of foreign manufacture for products we must look at other ways that mobilise a manufacturing workforce. To compete economically with cheap imported goods Tradeland pro- poses that the material product would have to become a bi-product of experience, in the form of a social or community workshop. The model of the knitting circle or the Women’s Institute market, are examples that show how pleasure in making can compensate for the lack of economic reward. As designers, can we embrace an unskilled or amateur workforce to create a generation of products that have an aesthetic that reflects such amateurism or lack of professional skill? Can this become a design choice? Could this process be employed as a community building tool to engage a public in creating a city that is an enriching place to live?

For more information about specific works please visit the blog or contact will@willshannon.co.uk.