Fast Forward 2025 Semester 2 | CJ Lim, University College London

Fast Forward 2025: Systems Change - Finance, Planning, and Community in the Climate Era

August-September 2025 | Te Pare School of Architecture and Planning, University of Auckland

How do we fundamentally transform the systems that shape our built environment? Fast Forward 2025 brings together perspectives on disrupting finance, master planning, and community development to address New Zealand's most pressing challenges: housing affordability, climate adaptation, and sustainable urban growth.

As communities seek new approaches for the future, these speakers demonstrate how rethinking fundamental systems—from investment models to planning frameworks to community governance—can create pathways to genuinely sustainable and equitable futures.

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CJ Lim, Professor of Architecture & Urbanism at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London

CJ Lim has served as Vice-Dean and Pro-Provost of UCL. He is the founder of CJ Lim Imaginarium, a creative academy fostering idiosyncratic imagination, and Studio 8 Architects, a UK-based multidisciplinary and international practice. His works explores how narratives from science fiction, history, socio-politics and humanity can inform architecture and the innovation of resilient cities. A recipient of the Royal Academy of Arts London ‘Grand Architecture Prize’, he has authored 12 books including ‘Short Stories: London in two-and-a-half Dimensions’ (2011), ‘Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes + Eco-warriors’ (2019), ‘Once Upon a China’ (2021), and ‘Dreams + Disillusions’ (2024)."

Lecture

‘Dream Systems, Not Dream Homes’

In this moment of climate upheaval, housing crises, a greying population, and food prices flirting with absurdism, the traditional notion of home – as a single house or discrete housing unit – feels increasingly inadequate. Enter a new breed of domestic typologies: homes that adapt, grow, and occasionally cry; a retrofitted Trump Wall reimagined as a work-from-home social condenser; cooperative housing schemes with a spring garden for winter; intergenerational green-finger club; or heroic amphibious dwellings that float gently with rising tides, WiFi provided. These polemic reimaginings call for a shift in both design practice and policy – from housing as commodity to housing as a resilient, adaptive system of adaptation, production, and resilience. By embedding climate awareness and food security into the very fabric of domestic architecture, we cultivate active agents of ecological practice and socio-political intent. This is not simply a technical adjustment – it is an ethical repositioning of architecture’s role.

Please note that tickets purchased from unauthorized third-party websites are not valid; please use only the approved website (eventbrite.co.nz) for ticket purchases/registrations.

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Getting to the venue:

The main Faculty of Engineering and Design buildings are conveniently located at the heart of the University's City Campus, and are easily accessible via many forms public transport. For further information on public transport schedules, visit the Auckland Transport website.

For those driving in, further information on parking options can be found here.