oday marks the start of the London Festival of Architecture 2022, a month-long series of events, talks, walks, workshops and installations celebrating and interrogating the capital’s built environment.
As a member of the curation panel it’s been fun to see how entrants have responded to this year’s theme – Act.
For some the word has conjured up ideas around artifice and theatricality but I like reading it as an imperative. Act! Get involved! Don’t just sit around complaining once the world has changed around you.
The idea behind the festival is to encourage citizens to understand architecture not as something that happens to them, but as something more collaborative. It is also a testing ground for new ideas, some of which might eventually get adopted permanently.
The pedestrianised Exhibition Road with Foster and Partners Pavilion
/ LFAThe Scandi-style “shared space” for pedestrians and cars in South Kensington is one such innovation. I remember being quite surprised when I first came out of the Tube above ground, having always previously accessed the museums via the old foot tunnel to avoid the congested, polluted and coach-lined Exhibition Road.
The current, pedestrian-friendly streetscape was helped through public consultation by an event at the LFA in 2008, which closed the road to traffic for the first time to make way for a weekend of pop-up installations, food stalls and performances.
Efficient, smart bike parking solutions are another LFA speciality. The 2006 ‘Reinventing the Bike Shed’ competition gave rise to Anthony Lau’s ingenious Cyclehoop (those teapot handles on signposts that cyclists can lock their bikes to) 2,000 of which are now installed throughout the world.
This year there was an open call for Pop-Up Bike Parking ideas for simple, safe bike storage at stations. Architect Iain Jamieson and artist Zoe Power have created Over Here, a multi-coloured bike rack, designed to make available bike parking spaces easily identifiable even from far away.
The modular stands are being trialled at Victoria Station for the month but could be rolled out across mainline stations, encouraging more people to combine bike and rail journeys instead of driving.
Gloomy underpasses and other intimidating and depressing walkways are another common problem the LFA seeks to solve, from a vacant stretch of canal towpath near Harrow Road in Westminster, to Yinka Ilori’s Happy Street under the Thessaly Road Railway Bridge in Wandsworth.
Somers Town is in the spotlight this year. In the shadow of Euston Station, the historic Camden neighbourhood is on the brink of huge transformation resulting from HS2 construction and the British Library Extension.
This year’s festival is a good opportunity to get a taste of what might be in store for the area, with a weekend-long road closure, and a competition for an installation to experiment with what might be possible in a car-free Phoenix Road, part of plans for a green link between Euston and St Pancras station.
Architecture shouldn’t be dry or intimidating, after all, it affects every one of us. Whether you want to get more involved with shaping the world around you or you just want a sneak peek at how the future might look, this is your month to act.