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This year’s London Festival of Architecture (LFA) will focus on the theme “community”, in an effort to demonstrate architecture’s relevance to the people of the city.
The event, which will take place from 1-30 June, will explore how Londoners and visitors to the city can be active participants in its growth and evolution – from redesigning familiar places, to testing interactive forms of consultation for future development.
“Community is at the heart of successful development in London, and the London Festival of Architecture 2016 is a fantastic opportunity for many different people and organisations to come together and demonstrate architecture’s relevance to London’s diverse communities,” said Tamsie Thomson, the LFA’s recently appointed director. “We will be posing challenging questions in lively and interesting ways. How, for example, can communities genuinely be placed at the heart of responses to London’s housing crisis? How should commercial development adapt to fluid workforces, co-working and other new ways of working? What is the role of leisure and retail in enriching communities through new urban development? The 2016 festival will be an exciting opportunity to explore how people and communities can address those issues together.”
The programme will feature exhibitions and events organised by London’s leading architectural, cultural and academic institutions, alongside practising architects, designers, curators and community groups. Proposals are now being sought for events, as well as for practices to open their studios to the public during the month – including, for the first time, landscape architects and chartered architectural technologists.
Last year’s highlights included a lecture by Thomas Heatherwick, Routemaster bus tours of the West End by TfL Commissioner Peter Hendry, tours of the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre with its architects Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, and Assemble’s Brutalist Playground exhibition at the RIBA.
The call for entries is open to all until 26 March.
See www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org for more
2016 edition will focus on how the people of the city can reshape its growth and evolution
