The 21st century will be a century of cities. For the first time, over half of the world’s population will live in cities. A rapid urbanization on this scale raises one clear challenge of how to put the social/cultural and environmental sustainability at the heart of 21st century urbanism and by doing so also at the very centre of city life. The global magnetism of a premier city stems not only from its infrastructure, but from the power and energy it draws from those who live and work in it, and so animate it.

Studio Fink’s projects often engage people directly with their cityscapes, unlocking the possibility for the new and old to coexist in an unexpected way as a part of a continually evolving urban narrative. The work of Studio Fink is driven by Peter’s interest as an artist in how public in both permanent and temporary context can celebrate and express the confluence of cultures and cityscapes.

Place-making for Studio Fink is a challenge of how to expand the existing urban terrain into a landscape of opportunity through the exploration of connectedness and interlinking, a network rather than a hierarchy. In response to the evolution and pace of change within cities and the constant underlying challenge of developing infrastructure ahead of the economic pace Studio Fink fuses art with urban design, landscape architecture , engineering,  ecology and environmental design. Working often collaboratively it helps to deliver aspirational and cohesive responses to complex urban and social situations.

Peter Fink sees culturally informed urbanism as critical in the realignment into new modes of thinking - of how to  unlock the existing resources of cities through seeing the urban landscape not only as the end result of a previous creative process, but as the beginning of a new continuity —a landscape to design with, not for. Through social leadership and engaged cultural practice Studio Fink links their projects to a sense of place and community.

The reclaiming of much of the grey, abandoned and overlooked urban areas is central to many of Studio Fink’s  projects. Through the exploration of green urbanism these places often become ‘green’, both literally in an environmental sense and metaphorically as places of new growth and positive change.

Within the green urbanism narrative the solid represents the fast emerging and physically manifest architecture and the slow and more complex void the cultural and environmental landscape is for Peter Fink akin to describing architecture and urban design as making beautiful stepping stones in the river but realizing that the world is making the water.