IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section B

Abstract

The Missing Building (TMB) explores how participatory and speculative design practices, combined with urban storytelling, can be used to reimagine cities and address the emotional, cultural, and functional needs of communities. It examines how individuals conceptualise “missing buildings” in their environments, transforming these imagined spaces into artefacts that contribute to urban design discourse. The project provides an accessible and creative framework for engaging with the built environment beyond conventional planning methods, centring public participation as a crucial element in rethinking urban spaces. This research is part of a doctoral thesis investigating how participatory methodologies can bridge local and global urban perspectives. It adopts an autoethnographic approach, intertwining the researcher’s experiences, reflections, and positionality within urban design and participatory practices. The six cities examined: Beira (MZ), Sardoal (PT), Cambridge (CN), Rotterdam (NL), Fortaleza (BZ), and Chester (UK), are places that have shaped the researcher’s understanding of architecture, education, and belonging, and provide a lens through which personal and collective engagements with urban space are examined, uncovering how memory, culture, and socio-political conditions influence perceptions of absence and presence in the built environment. Through storytelling and model-making, TMB challenges dominant urban development narratives and repositions communities as co-authors of their spaces. The project critically examines how speculative design can be used as a mode of resistance against exclusionary planning practices, offering a space for dialogue, imagination, and action. By reframing what is missing, the research highlights the generative possibilities of absence, proposing an alternative urban discourse where buildings that do not yet exist still have the potential to shape lived experiences, policy, and design practices.