Lecture: Decentring Future Imaginaries: A Decolonial Approach to Spatial Design Thinking

Lakshmi Priya Rajendran is a post-disciplinary social scientist with a background in architecture, urban design and planning. Her teaching and research interests deal with city imaginaries, decoloniality, critical social and digital media, spatial representation and practice, identity negotiations, and cultural encounters in contemporary cities. She is particularly interested in an interdisciplinary understanding of social, spatial, temporal and material practices in cities and a comparative study of these practices in the Global South. Her doctoral research (at Sheffield School of Architecture, University of Sheffield) focused on marginalised migrant communities in Sheffield examined the significance of socio-spatial dimension for inclusive urban design. Her research won the International Best PhD Award 2015 from Society for Research on Identity Formation, US. She is also the Co-chair for the UCL's Environment Research domain and Academic Co-chair for the UCL Advisory Group on Climate Change and Health. 

By drawing on the ongoing work with Decolab – A Decolonial Collaboratorium, this presentation explores how a decolonial perspective can challenge and reshape architecture and urban design thinking. It builds upon my collaborative, international (UK, Netherlands, and India), and interdisciplinary (Architecture, Design, Cultural Studies) research project, focusing on a site in India. By centring local practices and values and incorporating "more-than-human" and socio-spatial factors, I demonstrate how we can cultivate inclusive and sustainable future imaginaries. Through this research, I illustrate how everyday conflicts and negotiations shape our interactions with space, providing critical insights into the evolving relationship between communities and their environments. Using creative visual methods, we weave reality and fiction together to create engaging, multi-layered spatial narratives. This decolonial framework promotes a holistic and participatory approach to design thinking, ensuring that the voices and needs of marginalised groups are integral to creating just and vibrant urban spaces.

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