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Join us every second Tuesday of the month for a dose of optimism with thought-provoking guests who are revolutionizing their fields. Innovators will lead virtual workshops for an hour of discovery, inspiration, and community. Led by editor in chief, Avinash Rajagopal, these workshops will be guided by our audience, where questions are not only welcome but encouraged.

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Metropolis Editors, Natural Habitat, sustainability, sustainable architecture

METROPOLIS Introduces Natural Habitat, a Sustainable Homes Video Series

The series debuts with a tour of a tranquil upstate New York retreat designed with Passive House principles.

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BLOOM. In this short speculative film, Freedman tells a story that explores anthropogenic mass-migration, adaptation, resilience, and optimism in which the ocean is leveraged for its carbon-sinking potential.

August 21, 2024

Jack London Freedman Balances Timelessness with Timeliness

The SCI-Arc graduate creates innovative work rooted in photography, psychology, and visual storytelling.

By: Anna Elise Anderson

Jack London Freedman is an optimist. Hyperaware that the current climate makes it “increasingly easy to fall into a dystopic vision for the future,” the Los Angeles–based photographer and multidisciplinary designer thinks the biggest challenge facing future generations may be a loss of hope. “I think it’s important that a positive vision of the future be shared among the design community,” he says. Freedman’s innovative adaptive reuse projects, which often leverage older postindustrial sites “built to last far longer than most contemporary construction methods,” earned him two Architizer Vision Awards in 2023.

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FYTOSI. Designed in collaboration with hospitality management students Andrew Bialosky, Kristi Wadler, and Anthony Wilson, FYTOSI is an innovative food hall rooted in sustainability and adaptive reuse.

Freedman received an MArch 2 from the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 2023, after earning a BS in architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. He learned, while honing his body of work, to balance timelessness with timeliness. “Are you designing something that is of the moment, or are you designing something meant to transcend the time and place in which it was created? For me, there’s a little bit of both in every project,” he says. Freedman currently serves as an adjunct design faculty member at SCI-Arc, where his frequent collaborations with students demonstrate his conviction that “the best creative work comes from cross-pollinating ideas of different perspectives, backgrounds, and contexts.” 

Photography plays a critical role in shaping Freedman’s focus on composition, visual storytelling, and leveraging light and shadow in designed spaces. But it’s a deep interest in human psychology that drives most of his work. This translates into a design philosophy that stresses the critical importance of letting people fill spaces with themselves: “their energies, perspectives, and feelings.” His belief in the value of other people stems from his belief in the power of originality itself: “It has taken a long time for me to convince myself that the way I see the world and the way my brain works, deficiencies and all, is what makes me a powerful creative force.” 

rendering from an animated film
TEMPORAL WILDFIRES. In this film, Freedman and Kaustubh Kulkarni envision a “civilization long lost in time and space” as it “wrestles with a collapsing reality…leaving what’s recognizable ruined, and carving a path to a new reality.”

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