High-rise landscapes: The afterlives of tower block 'failure' and rethinking urban futures

这个项目将研究高层建筑失败的连锁反应：它如何在世界上展开并产生深远的影响，以及它的后世如何被利用来重新思考城市未来。以伦敦格伦费尔大厦大火和内罗毕一系列建筑倒塌事件为起点，它将批判性地将“失败”作为一个社会政治范畴，并将其作为一个事件来探索失败在世界上是如何起作用的，以及它的后世可能会产生什么。定性、跨学科的城市方法和雄心勃勃的影响和公众参与方案将调查火灾和建筑倒塌如何在多个尺度上改变更广泛的城市景观，从拆除到城市更新，从物质创新到政治和舆论。它将探索火灾、材料故障和建筑倒塌等故障是如何嵌入到社会、政治和基础设施干预的更长历史中，以及这些如何随着时间的推移积累起来，塑造出排斥、渴望和转型的高层地理位置。该项目从失败的地点调查城市转型，将跟踪火灾和建筑倒塌引发的立法、政治和社会变化，以及正在重塑内罗毕和伦敦社区的强大的城市激进主义和公民赋权之间的相互关系。在方法上，该项目将采用一种比较主义的全球都市主义方法，实施一种与差异和差异合作的开放式模式，而不是试图控制差异。这种方法跨越城市研究中传统的全球南北分界线，以影响为导向，与建筑环境专业人员、艺术家和社区团体以及建筑本身合作。从根本上说，它突出了受住房灾难影响的社区的声音，认可了他们在自己社区的专长，并将他们纳入重新思考高层建筑景观未来的方法中。

This project will examine the ripple effects of high-rise building failure: how it unfolds in the world with far-reaching consequences, and how its afterlives might be harnessed for rethinking urban futures. Taking the Grenfell Tower fire in London and a series of building collapses in Nairobi as its starting points, it will critically engage with 'failure' as both a socio-political category and as an event to explore how failure acts in the world, and what its afterlives might generate. Qualitative, interdisciplinary urban methods and an ambitious impact and public engagement programme will investigate how fire and building collapse can transform wider urban landscapes across multiple scales, from demolition to urban renewal, material innovation to politics and public opinion. It will explore how failures such as fire, material malfunction and building collapse are embedded in longer histories of social, political and infrastructural intervention, and how these accumulate across time to shape high-rise geographies of exclusion, aspiration and transformation. Investigating urban transformation from sites of failure, the project will track the interrelations of legislative, political and social change triggered by fire and building collapse, alongside powerful urban activism and civic empowerment that are reshaping communities in Nairobi and London.Methodologically, the project will adopt a comparativist, global urbanism approach that implements an open-ended mode of working with variation and discrepancy rather than attempting to control for difference. Working across conventional Global North/ South divides in urban studies, this approach is impact-oriented and participatory, working with built environment professionals, artists and community groups - as well as buildings themselves. Fundamentally, it foregrounds the voices of communities affected by housing disasters, recognising their expertise in their own neighbourhoods, and integrating them into methods for rethinking the future of high-rise landscapes.