Cities are made up of overlapping material flows. At a time of rapid urbanisation, these flows are getting ever faster, denser and more complex. The construction industry accounts for 38% of total global emissions.

Test Unit is a summer school exploring cross-disciplinary approaches to city development. Through an intensive week we aim to turn talk into action by testing ideas in public space. Each year we inhabit a building or site and learn through engaging with ideas, materials, people and place.

Like many cities, Glasgow has a wealth of vacant buildings and sites following industrial decline. As demand for space changes, we need to explore processes that are less capital intensive and quicker to respond to people and change.

Test Unit 2016 delivered a week-long intensive art, design and architecture summer school and events programme, that saw 25 cross-disciplinary participants come together and over the course of a week transform a vacant and derelict site in north Glasgow into a public space.