Global warming will change our world beyond recognition: Mark Lynas says, ‘When the earth was last four degrees warmer, there was no ice at either pole. Global warming of this magnitude would eventually leave the whole planet without ice for the first time in nearly 40 million years.’ The intergovernmental panel of climate change and the Met Office predict a temperature rise of between 1.8–5.8 degrees in the next millennium.

A four-degree world will result in the re-organisation of the planet. Humanity must begin to ask how such environmental change, rather than being a threat, is a generator to reconfigure our cities and create new urban models.

The Romans chose their position along the edge of the Thames, where it was deep enough for their largest sea-going ships. Victoria’s Embankment was able to control and alter nature’s course. As man puts pressure on nature, nature begins to fight back and eventually overpowers Victoria’s imposition.

The altered depth of the Thames now allows the largest ships back into the centre of London. Through the rising water, state infrastructures are washed out of London’s urban fabric and float above the old city. Centres ­that people have traditionally travelled to now have this remarkable ability to move themselves. Wherever infrastructure is needed, it can now go.

The Fallen Icon. Inverted Skyline

Man’s obsessions have led to icons of absurdity, energy-doomed products of a wasteful era. These icons will fall within a future, energy conscious society; a metaphor for a new type of architecture, a new type of city.

The fallen icons, former vertical typologies, have become linear. The fallen skyline, now read from Google Earth, is able to bridge the water and connect the moving infrastructures to London’s dry urban fabric. The starchitects’ skyscrapers have become habitable bridges which, not only allow London to survive in the flooded world, but thrive under the new conditions.