London Festival of Architecture

Week one

It somehow feels that the anticipation surrounding this year’s London Festival of Architecture was greater and more intense than any of the previous years’ events – possibly because it quickly became clear that this year’s festival would be significantly bigger than any of its predecessors.

This maybe partly because of the recent cancellation of the annual Architecture Week scheme, which potentially put extra pressure on the festival, but we think it is mostly because this year, for the first time, Wallpaper* is personally involved with the LFA - launching the first of the HausWork* talks this Wednesday.

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The festival features a record 600 plus events and includes participants from all over the architecture world, both geographically – the Embassies project includes 28 countries, from Chile to Canada, Norway and Georgia – and professionally. Exhibitions, lectures and tours have been organised by architectural practices of all shapes and sizes, as well as students, who have created their own activities alongside the annual architecture schools' summer shows.

The first weekend started with a bang, concentrating on the Kensington, Chelsea and Knightsbridge hub, and the takeover of Exhibition Road: from Foster and Bill Fontana’s design and sound installation, to open-air debate hubs like Tonkin Liu’s Fresh Flower pavilion, and even children’s activities like the V&A’s Archi-Hats tent - by midday the road was flooded with visitors.

The beginning of the LFA also coincided with the first of the architecture schools' summer shows: both the Bartlett and the RCA launched at the end of last week, showing off the cream of the crop of this year’s student work.

Numerous events are also scattered around town - like the bright pink park rangers hut by Wilkinson Eyre’s Part One students in Clerkenwell - and more are coming up, which means that we all have many reasons to be out and about all week and longer. Watch this space...

23 June 2008 | Architecture