BA Urban Planning and Design Year 1 BA Urban Planning and Design
TUTORS: Luz Navarro & Kanaka Thakker
City Design Studio 1
The Year 1 studio’s pedagogy encourages students to question the role of planning and design and navigate the socio-spatial landscape of urban regeneration.
The Year 1 Studio of BAUPD was located in the Church Street ward of Westminster, focused on the Regent’s Canal and the surrounding neighbourhoods of Lisson Grove. Despite its central London location, the area is marked by deep socio-economic inequalities, high levels of deprivation and environmental challenges such as poor air quality, limited green access and flood risk. Regent’s Canal, once a vital artery for industrial transport, now presents a fragmented and underused landscape with potential for ecological renewal and community connection.
The area is the subject of the Church Street Masterplan, an ambitious multi-agency regeneration strategy aimed at delivering new housing, jobs and public space to the area while addressing historic marginalisation and exclusion of those who live here. However, this transformation also raises questions about equity and whose voices shape the future neighbourhood.
Year 1 focused on developing a critical spatial and social understanding of the city, equipping students to read urban environments through questions of inequality, everyday life and lived experience. It introduced design through small scale, climate friendly and tactical interventions in public space that respond directly to these conditions. Through collaborative and individual projects, students explored how planning and design shape everyday urban life and public space. Design is introduced as an exploratory and testing tool, allowing students to translate spatial analysis into modest but purposeful interventions that address climate risk, access and social justice, while foregrounding local needs, ecological balance and shared urban futures.
Archive of BA UPD Year 1’s work from previous years:
