Urban Metamorphosis
In Mayfield, an abandoned site situated among those facing redevelopment, has been slowly reclaimed by pioneer shrubs and wild species. Across the UK, brownfield sites like these are increasingly recognized as vital refuges for some of the country’s rarest biodiversity- yet remain vulnerable to erasure by new development.
Rather than overwrite this emergent ecosystem, the project Urban Metamorphosis sought to protect and amplify the sites boundaries that allowed nature’s return. Using salvaged materials from demolished warehouses nearby, a tower designed to decay acts as a monument to Mayfield’s past and symbolically reclaims space for overlooked non-human species. As the tower slowly transforms it weaves natural rhythms back into the city’s fabric, reframing urban development as a process of renewal.
Material choices are used to challenge normative hierarchies between species in architectural design, with lightweight impermanent forms accommodating human presence, emphasising their status as visitors within a larger, evolving ecology, while denser materials are used to spatially and symbolically give prominence to other life and processes.
Openings for both human and non-human visitors dissolve the boundaries between species and space, shaping an architectural ecosystem of shared inhabitation. Irregular pathways spiral around and through the structure, designed to enforce care through unknown encounters and guide movement, preserving a fragile coexistence. A removable research centre attached to a protective wall on the site’s edge, monitors the tower’s transformation- its lifespan dependent on the levels of human interaction with the wall acting as a marker of time and a reflection on human accountability, highlighting the delicacy of wild systems and our responsibility within them.
Through ecological research, biodiversity, and community interaction, Urban Metamorphosis returns Mayfield’s urban fabric to slow rhythms of natural transformation, offering an alternative vision for regeneration; rooted in coexistence, care, and natural cycles of change.
