Fast and Slow: What a Railway Arch Taught Me About the Future of Real Estate
Written by Adam Scott, Experience Foundation.
Chairing CREAM beneath Waterloo Station revealed a powerful truth: the most resilient places thrive when fast experience meets slow infrastructure - and when purpose stitches them together.
Two weeks ago, I found myself standing under a railway arch deep beneath Waterloo Station. Trains rumbled overhead. The air was laced with spray paint. Lights shone in my eyes. And ahead of me: 250 of the commercial real estate sector’s finest - investors, developers, designers, occupiers, asset managers — gathered for a very different kind of conference.
It was called CREAM. I had the privilege of chairing it.
And from the moment the planning calls began, it was clear that this day would pivot on two forces pulling in opposite directions:
The fast system - How AI and exponential tech might soon render portfolios obsolete.
The slow system - How we move from extractive real estate to regenerative ecosystems.
On paper, those themes sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. But what if they’re not in opposition at all? What if understanding how fast and slow systems work together is the very key to designing for the future?
To make that point, I took the audience back to 1994 - to a conversation between Stewart Brand and Brian Eno in Eno’s London studio. Brand, inspired by his discussions with architect Frank Duffy, introduced a model called Pace Layers - a way to understand complex systems by how quickly (or slowly) their components evolve.
At the top, we have the fast-moving layers: fashion, commerce, culture. These are reactive, dynamic, experiential - like the leaves of a tree responding to the season.
At the base, we have the slow layers: governance, infrastructure, environment. These evolve over decades or centuries - like a forest ecosystem shaping and being shaped over time. They bring memory, coherence, resilience.
Brand’s genius was to show how these layers interact - the fast learns, the slow remembers. And the most enduring systems are those in which these layers work together.
So I invited the CREAM audience to consider the very place we were standing - Leake Street Arches, completed in 2008 - through this lens of fast and slow.
Slow First: Resilience by Design
Leake Street Arches is a 26,000 sq ft cultural destination carved from eight disused arches beneath Waterloo. Its rebirth began with slow thinking:
LCR secured a 250-year lease from Network Rail.
Lambeth Council and South Bank BID brought governance muscle.
Public realm, infrastructure, and architectural interventions were stitched in with care.
This was urban keyhole surgery - precise, deliberate, and long-term - building deep resilience into the fabric of the place.
Then Fast: Relevance by Experience
But it wasn’t just about fixing arches. From the start, it was launched with Banksy’s Can Festival - establishing the longest legal street art wall in the UK. Today, the arches pulse with events, activations, independent food and drink, creative enterprise, and an ever-evolving calendar of cultural programming.
What holds it all together? The Leake Street Forum, aligning letting strategy with community engagement - a quiet triumph of empathetic asset management.
It’s a case study in how fast and slow can (and must) work in concert - the long lease and the pop-up, the brickwork and the artwork, the contract and the culture.
So What Did I Learn at CREAM?
The Pace Layers lens kept proving its value throughout the day. As conversation after conversation unfolded, three lessons emerged:
1. A Purpose Lesson. Prosperity - not just profit - begins with shared purpose. When relevance (fast) and resilience (slow) align, we create more than returns - we create places people believe in.
Basil Demeroutis of FORE Partnership put it beautifully:
"We’ve had the humanness beaten out of us. We need a purpose wayfinder to survive and thrive in a post-carbon community."
2. A Partnership Lesson. In times of rapid change, we all become asset managers - investors, occupiers, designers alike.
What unites us is shared methodology: metrics, dialogue, empathy. As Paul O'Grady from Canary Wharf Group put it:
“Together, we need to work ever closer with our customers. This is an act of high-level empathy.”
3. A Place Lesson. Aldo van Eyck once said, “Space and time matter, but place and occasion matter more.”
Above all, CREAM reminded me: we must stop treating experience as an overlay. It is the foundation.
As Antony Slumbers asked:
“Is your portfolio designed for experience and connection?” If not, obsolescence is coming.
The Final Word
Antony Slumbers closed with a provocation: “The future has come forward by 10 years.”
AI and automation are accelerating change. Many buildings - undifferentiated, uninspired - will soon be obsolete. What will endure are places designed not just with data, but with empathy.
The new luxury is human-centricity. It’s how we stay relevant in fast times, and resilient in slow ones. It’s not just how we build - it’s how we listen, adapt, and connect.
So ask the deeper questions. Design for emotionally resonant experiences. And create places people will still love - and need - a generation from now.
Let’s begin.
Thank you to: Rob Marten, Neall De Beer, Philippa Gill, Juliette Morgan, James Felstead, Chris Hyder, David O'Sullivan, Mel Reeves, Anca Stefanescu, Sam Pound-Jones, Inger Ahaneku, Polly Plunket-Checkemian and Chris Coleman-Brown.
Image credit: Adam Scott