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WIRED 2015: Next Generation is our annual event dedicated to inspiring young minds, where innovators aged 12 to 18 years old gather at London’s Tobacco Dock for talks, hands-on workshops and Q&As. For more from the event head to our WIRED NexGen Hub.
If you want to be a superhero, start trespassing, Oxford geographer Bradley Garrett told the attendees of WIRED Next Generation at London's Tobacco Dock.
Garrett is among the most famous advocates of urban exploration, or place hacking, which he defines as the craft of "researching, scoping, and accessing off-limits places" such as abandoned buildings or sewer tunnels-- and on which he published a book in 2013.
Garrett explained that, although one might assume there's nothing left to explore on our planet, that's just because we think about "exploring" the wrong way. "Exploration is actually about encountering new environments, building new knowledges," he said. "It’s about having new experiences."
After moving to London in 2008, Garrett said he was immediately drawn to the colossal, inoperative Battersea Power Station, and he grew increasingly curious about what could be inside the building. "[A friend of mine and I] actually sent an email to the property's owner asking him to have a look. He told us it would cost £2,000 a day," Garrett said. "So we decided to take the easy route: we went there at two in the morning, and snuck in."
Once inside, and past the guards, they could see, touch and capture something they found incredible. "We found the original control panels of the power station, we also found blueprints inside a podium. We started flipping the switches, doing all the things you can't [normally] do," he said. Years later, after it was decided that the station would be redeveloped as a luxury housing project, Garrett and his fellows explorers upped the ante, using ropes to climb on the top of one of the station's four chimneys.
"We had a view that very few people had ever seen. We were the last people to see this view, and this is a view very few people in history have seen," Garrett told the audience. "We don’t have to go too far to build new knowledge."
Admittedly, a big part of urban exploration is about infiltrating places that are beautiful to look at, and beautiful to take pictures of. But there's also the thrill of venturing into the unknown, and to do away with "no trespassing" signs. That emerged clearly from a short segment of a documentary on urban exploration that Garrett showed at the end of his talk. One of the explorers told to the camera that he got into place hacking to do something akin to what characters in fantasy books, or superhero comics, do.
"If you want to have superpowers here’s your ticket," Garrett quipped.
But for him, urban exploration is more than just a Kick-Ass escapade -- he sees it as something socially vital. "Exploration is part of human nature , and the moment we stop exploring our world, including the cities we live in,that' s the moment the cities become dead," he said.
That's why Garrett "explicitly encourage[s] to trespass." Garrett explained that -- barring military facilities and railways -- trespassing is not a criminal offence in England, and that therefore most of the city "is fair game."
A good start? Abandoned buildings, projects under construction, or even London sewer system. "All it requires, is buying a manhole key on Amazon," Garrett said.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
