urban sustention (a) Part 1 Project 2007 Joseph Deane University for the Creative Arts | UK The site in London’s deprived Newham borough sees the beginning of a proposed network of so-called ‘green-shelves’; active information/education ligatures which aim to support the future reform of the capital’s cultural and environmental trends. In an age when air-miles and air-conditioning have created an almost non-negotiable state of seasonal paraesthesia, the function of the community nexus becomes one of reconnecting us with our temporal surroundings. As such, both programme and form become instruments of spatio-temporal identification; spaces where time, the vector, change and even death are celebrated, and where the body is thus permitted to once again find itself in the rhythms of its seasonal surroundings. Urban Sustenance invited students to consider how architecture might sustain life in the city in a manner that is responsive to multiple micro-changes in human attitudes to sustainability currently taking place. Three sites, on thresholds of the Olympic regeneration area, offered students the scope to filter and reinterpret local and international issues. Joseph proposed ‘green-shelves’ - a potentially expansive proposal that aims to reform the capital’s cultural and environmental direction by stimulating reconnection with our temporal surroundings in nature. The complex and well considered aspirations and programme demonstrate a concern to connect the radical with sensitive and potentially realisable innovation.