As part of this year’s Open Garden Estates, Achilles Street residents researched the abundance of wildflowers living in and around their estate. The walk they created out of their discovery reveals the beauty found in unlikely places and raises questions about how we value our urban environment and local communities. Overlooked and unappreciated, these plants, like the residents, will be uprooted and discarded in the demolition of the estate.

Sustainability is about the relationship between our communities and the environment in which they live. Estate demolition is as much an attack on our natural environment as on our local communities, unnecessarily releasing huge quantities of embodied carbon and pollutants into our atmosphere, as well as tearing up well established communities that have taken root over generations in the fabric of our city. Their destruction will leave London impoverished and stripped of its indigenous cultures and resources for the short term gain of non-domiciled and foreign speculation and investment.

Wildflowers growing in and around Achilles Street Estate, June 2017

Architects for Social Housing

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