I’m an architectural photographer based in London. For the last few years I have been working on a series of images called ecocities. I use some of the commissioned work and some of my personal work and combine this with imagery from stock libraries to produce my own version of an imagined future for London.
Sometimes the intervention in the image is subtle (viewers aren’t sure if the giant wind turbine by the heritage site of St. Paul’s really exists) and other times it is more obvious (there aren’t too many flamingos and fishing boats moored up along the Thames!). My main motivation is to produce a positive outlook.
All too often we look at environmental destruction as Armageddon for the world and solutions are seen as cutting back, stopping, going back in time rather than embraced as a potential for a more positive future.
Nowhere is this more pronounced than in architecture and planning. Planning this new world is of incredible importance and designing new ways to live within it equally so. My project serves to bring these questions to the fore. I created the first grass covered buildings a few years ago, this week I am waiting to hear if I get a commission to shoot a new hotel in London which has exterior grass walls 12 storeys high, how long before the flamingos arrive? Art and design must lead the way to a better, greener society.
