INTERSECTIONS – between sustainable transport infrastructure, digital tech, cycle networks, architecture, and the built environment.

The Bermondsey Bicycle Store – Photo SWArch

Sarah Wigglesworth is well known for her celebrated experimental architecture. Perhaps less known is that Sarah is a keen cyclist, and has been involved in a variety of cycle infrastructure projects, including the Bermondsey Bicycle Store, and more recently, the GO Cycle Kingston mini-Holland project. Sarah and her SWARCH studio team also developed a cycle-centric approach to traveling to project sites and other work involving travel. She will ride us through these and related projects and design thinking in relation to cycle infrastructure.

A Fourth Door Unstructured web-mag feature on the GO Cycle Kingston mini-Holland project can be found here.

Uckfield-Lewes Greenway map

After 30 years as Hackney Council’s former Principal Transport Planner – where he was instrumental in the development of its regional rail-infrastructure – Roger became director for Infrastructure and Networks at Railfuture, the leading campaigning organisation for better passenger and freight rail services. He is active in the Railfuture Bridge the Gap campaign to re-open an Uckfield-Lewes rail link, alongside other Railfuture’s campaigns and work.

Get Bikery eCargo Bike deliveries – Photo GetBikery

Long term Lewes resident and LDC/LTC councillor Matthew Bird is founder of the Get Bikery Project, a Lewes and Ouse Valley based community eCargo bike social initiative. Matthew will bring us up to date on Get Bikery’s work in developing first mile/last mile eCargo services for Lewes, Newhaven, and surrounding areas, while framing the project in the broader eCargo cycle infrastructure context and potential.

Photo Mark Lovell Design Engineers

Sustrans, the organisation behind the National Cycle Network, has developed, designed and helped engineer much of the network’s extensive cycle infrastructure. Adrienne Soudain, who trained as a landscape architect, is the regional Sustrans officer for the Sussex region, and she will illustrate Sustrans’ design approach while discussing current local Sussex related projects she is responsible for.

Connected Towns – from the Connected Cities website

Brian Q Love – Connected Cities

Drawing inspiration from Ebenezer Howard’s Social Cities Connected Cities envisions compact high quality and walkable brownfield and greenfield developments integrated with rail stations and rail connected linear settlements. Within this schema Connected Cities have also developed Connected Towns and New Green Quarters. Brian Q Love runs, Love Architecture, a Waterloo based studio long engaged in the connections between urban planning and rail transport.

Render HumanNature

The PhoenixLewes is a major ‘eco-development’ with multiple sustainability ambitions both for Lewes and for 21st century urban design internationally. A key aspiration is its ground-breaking low-to-no car eco-housing approach. Jonathan Smales, founder and director of HumanNature, the PhoenixLewes’s developer, will explore the 21st century potential of such low-to-no car urban design for place-making, a concern close to Smales’ heart, given his background with Greenpeace, and as founder of the millennial-era Earth Centre project.

Arduino air pollution sensor built by Dewar Fablab – Photo Oliver Lowenstein

With a background in science and arts, Harmen Zijp is an independent researcher and organiser of various grass roots initiatives. These range from public facilities for open innovation and culture to tools for democratic decision making. This includes an open-source air pollution sensor project deployed by citizen scientists to map air pollution levels across regional cities, towns and urban districts in the Netherlands and Norway, a variant of which they brought to Lewes for the Particulate workshop in November 2023. Harmen is a co-founder of De WAR, a hub for grass roots innovation in Amersfoort, The Netherlands.

A feature on the story of the De WAR so far, is in Fourth Door Review’s new no 12 edition.

Inside UCL’s PEARL Lab – Photo Perkins & Will Architecture

Nick Tyler is Director of the University of London College’s PEARL (Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory), a unique lab and massive warehouse space in East London, in which ‘life-sized environments’ can be created – a railway station, high street, town square – under controlled conditions, to examine how people interact with the environment and other people in such places. Transport related research includes testing accessibility in shared spaces, Thameslink carriage use research, and developing a universal sound to alert road-users of approaching E-Scooters.

Ian Goodfellow – PEARL isn’t only a unique lab but required a unique piece of architecture to house it. Ian Goodfellow, PEARL’s design lead and principal and design director at Perkins&Will’s London office (formerly PenoyrePrasad Architects) will accompany Nick Tyler’s talk with an overview of the design thinking and execution required to realise PEARL’s unusual brief.

An Unstructured feature on PEARL will be live shortly.