Peckham Phygital: Weaving new narratives of South London's urban fabric

The Presentation reports on 'Peckham Phygital' a project by CLUB VIRTual: a group of staff and students from the MA Interior and Spatial Design at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. The project seeks to record and preserve the cultural heritage of Peckham in South London through the use of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanning technology.

Peckham Phygital builds upon the project ‘What a Mess’ by Hugo Pilate and Pedro Gil Pharias in 2023. Members of Club Virtual will conduct walks through Peckham, creating LiDAR scans of the urban fabric, a process which Pharias and Pilate poignantly connect to the impressionist method of painting ‘en plein air’ (thus bringing together pointillism and the point cloud). The project reflects the growing use of LiDAR technology within creative practice growing from fields such as architecture, heritage, design and the locative arts as practitioners seek to build digital worlds that cross spaces and times, simultaneously conserving pasts, critiquing presents and speculating futures.

The use of Peckham reflects its focus as a site of rapid development through gentrification and globalisation. Its use as a site for the recent RomCom ‘Rye Lane’ (2023) suggesting it may be the next ‘Notting Hill’. This paper will discuss the project within this critical context, using creative cross disciplinary digital practices to weave new narratives between the actual and the virtual, between shifting presents and speculative futures of this vibrant South London district, currently one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the UK.

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