TDC’s top picks at the London Festival of Architecture

As the busy spring period of international design events continues, last week saw the launch of London’s Festival of Architecture. This year’s programme has been shaped around the theme ‘In Common’, with diverse events exploring collaborative architecture, the spirit of community and collective responsibility. Here are just a few of our favourites from the festival so far, with plenty still on to discover!

Build Together: Community Building at the Story Garden

(Took place 3rd June)

This project, organised by environmental and educational charity Global Generation, was all about using our shared outdoor spaces as an opportunity for collectivity and connection – to the land and each other. Motivated by the idea that modern construction processes have made us less aware of the origin and manufacture of our materials, Build Together encouraged people to reconnect with this through a day of community making with traditional building techniques at the Story Garden next to the British Library.

Global Generation are on a mission to make 8,000 bricks and 4,000 shakes for their new permanent site, which will be co-created with young people. Funds from their #championsforchildren campaign will help them to run similar workshops with local people – and every donation will be doubled until the 20th June! Donate here.

Songstreets

1st – 30th June

419 Brixton Rd, London SW9 8HE 

Launched in commemoration of the 75th Windrush anniversary and to mark the anniversary of the 1981 Brixton rising, Songstreets is an interactive audio walk through Brixton which allows listeners to discover the district’s streets and culture in an immersive new way. 

The Songstreets app was created by Brixton-based public arts company Aswarm in response to Indigenous Australian musician Jessie Lloyd’s residency in Brixton, during which Lloyd gathered rich stories and songs of the local area. Narrated by Brixton-born artist Tony Cealy, the audio guide combines a host of local voices to tell the lesser known stories and memories behind this culturally rich area of London. 

Download the location responsive mobile app Aswarm XR to access the guide – the tour starts outside Brixton tube, ending in Windrush Square.

Material Matters Workshop

16th June, 18:00 – 21:30

Senator Group London Showroom, 7 Back Hill, London, EC1R 5EN

In Farringdon, Chetwoods Architects’ sustainability team, Thrive, will be bringing their Material Matters workshop to LFA in partnership with Senator Group. Designed to help aid our collective responsibility to address the climate crisis, this will be a chance to explore a host of sustainable materials, with workshops delving into embodied carbon, health and wellbeing, and the circular economy. 

Seats at the Table

2nd – 30th June

Postman’s Park, King Edward Street, London

How could our public spaces be made more accessible? Seats at the Table explores this through a series of temporary, accessible and sustainable installations of street furniture in the Smithfield area of the City of London. 

The project is a collaboration between Re-Fabricate, a collective focused on eradicating waste, and the DisOrdinary Architecture Project, which brings disabled creativity into built environment education and practice. Prioritising inclusivity from the start, the team worked with local disabled and non-disabled young people, inviting them to create furniture that represents their relationships to, and accessibility requirements for, enabling equal places at the table.

Vertical Farm-to-Fork at the Factory

15 June – 26 June, 12:00 -18:00

The Factory Project, Factory Road, London E16 2HB

At The Factory space in the Royal Docks, visitors can explore the Vertical Farm-to-Fork project at its design stage – using XR technology from metaverse platform Spheroid Universe. 

The installation will invite us to imagine the future of how we experience food in light of the current challenges to traditional farming including declining resources and decreased biodiversity. Vertical farming, which can be set up in local, urban areas (thereby reducing mileage on transportation), requires fewer resources and can generate 10 times greater yield than traditional farming. 

Happy exploring! You can access the full LFA programme here.

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