Richard Brown

It is time to recognise the creative classes as our urban developers; because they define new ways of inhabiting forgotten parts of our cities, recycling old buildings from the inside out to make way for new innovative OCCUPATION. They invest their time, their money and their efforts to unleash the potential OF UNDISCOVERED AND UNDERVALUED URBAN SPACES. Their actions exude cultural value, which ultimately prices them out of their own neighbourhoods.

I propose that the creative classes are become ‘real’ developers, using their collective skills and expertise to self-procure, build and manage their own neighbourhoods, to the point where artists can in some way ‘reap what they sow’. This new kind of development MODEL would have principles set not around financial gain, but around socio-cultural activity.

Affordable Wick is a research/design/build campaign, with me the architect taking the role of agent between the fleeting cultural classes and the land-owning local authorities.

The ‘Roaming Work-space’ is a 31 sq ft cabin built out of reclaimed materials LOCALLY SOURCED in Hackney Wick. The cabin has been squatting on various public and private plots of land used as a free to hire workspace, as well as a campaign headquarters, encouraging discussion about self build, local policy and the Olympic Park.

THE WORK, IDEAS, DISCUSSIONS COLLECTED WHILST SQUATTING IN HACKNEY WICK WITH THE ROAMING WORK SPACE HAS LEAD TO 'Incremental', a moving factory, occupied by the creative classes, as a mechanism for self-built affordable work spaces.