BOOM Collective collaborative with the University of Westminster’s ‘Limits of Scarcity’ Conference Programme that took place between 23rd and 26th February 2013.

The conference was born from the Universities involvement in the international Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment (SCIBE) programme – SCIBE explores the relationship between scarcity and creativity in the context of the built environment by investigating how conditions of scarcity might affect the creativity of the different actors involved in the production of architecture and urban design, and how design-led actions might improve the built environment in the future. The research is based on the analysis of processes in four European cities: London, Oslo, Reykjavik and Vienna.

As part of the conference programme, BOOM Collective delivered a lecture series entitled ‘the Space in-between’ exploring how built environment designers need to address the interaction of the local environment and neighbouring buildings effectively environmentally designing the spaces in between buildings to improve the sustainable passive design of the individual buildings that form the local built environment.

Conference delegates were then given a brief to design a specific masterplan on a site in Bromley-by-Bow utilising candy confectionaries as part of the ‘Sweet City’ workshop. At the end of the exercise team leaders presented their plans and contributed to design critiques of all parties outputs.