Peckham Phygital by Club Virtual 2025

Weaving new narratives of South London’s urban fabric through creative digital spatial practice. Presented at the London Heritages Conference June 2025  

Peckham Phygital is 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. 

It seeks to preserve and re-interpret the cultural and architectural heritage of the Peckham area in South London through  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’ and so, 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 digital 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 a recent romcom ‘Rye Lane’ (2023) suggesting it may be the next ‘Notting Hill’. This paper will discuss the project within this critical context of using creative cross disciplinary digital practice to explore the critical heritages, shifting presents and speculative futures of this vibrant South London district, currently one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the UK.

Produced by Peter Maloney 2024-5 

Club Virtual for 2024/25 :
Akiko Takamura, Chenxu Qiu, Ella Dichlian, Hangyu Xiao, Hsin-ling Huang, Jessie Chen, Jiamu Xiang, Jing He, Kaylie Khor, Linaaz Linaaz, Margherita Menapace,
Qi You, Seokyung Jeong, Siqi Wang  Spencer Shultz, Tejaswini Dyavappanavar (Tara), Tiancheng Yang, Xing Xing Zhou, Yanlin Li, Yihui Huang, Zhiyu Lyu

+ Club Virtual: Peckham Phygital, TARA 2025



+ Club Virtual: Peckham Phygital, UBIQUITY 2025
 


+ Club Virtual: Peckham Phygital, Peckham Levels PLAY 2025



+ Club Virtual: Peckham Rye Station TUNNEL 2025





+ Club Virtual: Peckham Phygital, Bussey Building ROOF 2025



+ Club Virtual: Peckham Phygital, FOUNTAIN 2025