Westminster celebrated the London Festival of Architecture (LFA) with a series of events and activities across London in June, many of which were organised by the University’s School of Architecture + Cities.
The festival serves as a platform for architects, designers and enthusiasts to engage in a series of exhibitions, installations, talks, tours and workshops. This year’s theme was In Common, and the activities happening at the School of Architecture + Cities largely echoed this topic.
Having successfully organised a few of the events that were included in LFA’s previous programmes, Dr Maja Jovic, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Tourism, saw merit in promoting her students’, colleagues’, and her own work through the festival, showcasing research, design and ideas. Being a part of the family of events each year allows for recognition from a wider audience, fostering collaborations with professionals, celebrating work that takes place throughout the year and ultimately, bridging the gap between academia and practice.
The series of events began with Therapeutic Horticultural Pavilion at Cody Dock in East London on 3 June. Colleagues and students from Westminster designed and built a Quintin Hogg Trust-funded Therapeutic Horticulture Centre in collaboration with Cody Dock, OfCA and WebbYates Engineers. This Live Project was initiated by Maria Kramer and supported by Corinna Dean.
The pavilion was designed as a lightweight timber structure with a butterfly roof and demonstrated that plants and humans can happily co-exist in one space. Through these projects, Westminster colleagues and students aimed to introduce new ways of working collaboratively across sectors, taking their multidisciplinary skills within academia and using these in live projects to serve communities and have a positive impact on society.
This was followed by Drawing Attention: Architecture in the Age of Social Media on 8 June at Westminster’s Marylebone Campus. Drawing Attention: Architecture in the Age of Social Media is a new book by Hamza Shaikh – alumnus of the Master of Architecture (March) (RIBA pt II) course - published by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) that provides practical drawing guidance from leading figures around the world.
At the event, Hamza Shaikh gave an in-depth dive into the journey of writing his book and gave audiences an understanding of the exciting but unknown future of architects in the age of social media.
The next event in the series was Common Place on 13 June also at Marylebone Campus. At this event, five speakers explored the personal and embodied experiences of domestic and leisure places. Dr Sam Johnson-Schlee from London South Bank University encouraged audiences to pay attention to objects in the living room. Writer Rebecca May Johnson spoke about how she mixes critical thought and recipes in the kitchen. Dr Ro Spankie, Principal Lecturer and Subject Lead for Interior Architecture, investigated the study area of the home, specifically the objects in Freud’s desk. Dr Nancy Stevenson, the event organiser, took audiences outside to consider experiences of ‘out-dwelling’ in wooden huts and sheds. Finally, Karen Fitzsimon, a chartered landscape architect, historian and horticulturist, explored the allotment to contemplate growing food as a way of being, with Dr Maja Jovic chairing the event.
Outside of the campus and taking place at Stephen Taylor Architects, Dr Johannes Novy organised a series of events under the umbrella of Fragile Brutalism. The series started with (Un) Common Trajectories: Post-war Modernist Housing in Ukraine and the UK, an event that explored the shared and divergent experiences of modernist social housing in the UK and Ukraine, including its history, present and possible future. It featured Jane Pavitt from the Zaha Hadid Foundation and Dr Michael Romyn from the School of History at Queen Mary University. This event acted as a vernissage for the exhibition Fragile Brutalism, a homage to the Ukrainian modernist prefabricated buildings known as panelki, whose destruction has become a haunting symbol of the brutality endured by civilians in the wake of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Dasha Podoltseva, a Ukrainian artist, and Elena Orap, a Ukrainian architect, first engaged with panelki to rehabilitate their image after the buildings had fallen into disrepute due to their brutalist appearance and Soviet-era origins. Responding to the war, they now explore the fragility of these buildings that they, and with them millions of Ukrainians, call or have called home. The exhibition ran from 13 to 28 June.
The next event in the series organised by Dr Johannes Novy was Notions of Home and Loss in Times of War and Peace on 15 June and also hosted at Stephen Taylor Architects in conjunction with Fragile Brutalism. In an informal setting with Ukrainian music and food, this event used the exhibition not only as an opportunity to reflect on what is happening in Ukraine, but also to invite Londoners and Ukrainians, along with anyone interested, to explore together what home means, what it means to be confronted with the reality or threat of its loss, and what individuals share in terms of their notions of it and where they diverge.
One of the key events for the School, OPEN 2023, ran between 15 - 30 June at Westminster’s Marylebone Campus. It is an annual hybrid exhibition of projects that reflect the varied design approaches of the School of Architecture + Cities, its diverse students and their place at the heart of London. This year’s show celebrated the openness and diversity of Westminster’s Architecture and Design students and included an extensive range of creative student work.
The festival also featured Sharing Open Space which ran between 15 - 30 June alongside OPEN 2023. This exhibition aimed to promote what a truly inclusive public park might be to potential investors or stakeholders. It showcased the creativity of students in the Urban Design MA course at the School of Architecture + Cities, particularly their work with local stakeholders as part of the Place and Experience in Design of Urban Spaces module led by Dr Krystallia Kamvasinou who organised this initiative.
The Common Stream took place on 23 June at Bromley-by-Bow Underground Station. On a walk from Bromley-by-Bow to Cody Dock along the River Lea, colleagues from the School of Architecture + Cities - Corinna Dean, Diana Periton, Lindsay Bremner, Stroma Cole and Paolo Zaide - were joined by the performance artist Abuzar Madhu and opened a conversation and debate about how bodies of water enact their common presence.
Re-Imagining Coral Reefs ran between 28 - 30 June at Marylebone Campus. This was a virtual reality (VR) experience, organised by Dr John Zhang and aimed at communicating the climate science of coral reef research to a wider audience. Visitors to the event venue were invited to try on VR headsets and experience healthy, degraded and re-imagined coral reefs from both human and non-human perspectives. Their virtual experiences were projected in real-time in the event space, which also contained 3D-printed models of the virtual corals they were experiencing.
Find out more about Architecture, Interior and Urban Design courses at the University of Westminster.
