700,000 Londoners feel severely lonely most or all of the time. Fieldwork, expert interviews and a survey led to “A City of Intentional Interactions”, a participatory model that works from the individual to the whole city. I tested it in public with “Weaving London”, a giant loom where strangers wove their stories into one tapestry.
The council’s housing strategy wasn’t reaching the people it was meant to protect. I co-led a research team with the grassroots group Focus E15 and shifted the framing from infrastructure to the lived reality of family precarity, health barriers and displacement. The resulting housing model was presented to council leadership.
The brief was a health campaign. The real challenge was cultural, rooted in climate, tradition and the rise of e-gaming. I led the research, reframed it as a “movers’ ladder” that meets citizens where they stand, from non-movers to pro athletes, and designed the identity and campaign that carried it: “Abu Dhabi Moves”.
The client asked for a new bus livery. Research showed the real barrier was a stigma around public transport and a fragmented system with no shared identity. I proposed and designed Abu Dhabi Transport: one identity across bus, metro, taxi and ferry.
