Every month architects & industry insiders share their recommendations for the best exhibitions and events to visit in London.
THIS MONTH:
The Young Trustees
The Young Trustees is a group of architecture workers that actively champions emerging and underrepresented voices from within, and beyond, the built environment.
With days finally getting brighter, we’re highlighting events that will get you out into London to enjoy those April evenings and engage with topics ranging from housing to play.
Our edit of events this month centres around the Young Trustees’ ethos of empowering unheard voices and platforming alternative narratives through an architectural lens. So, if you haven’t already been down to the RIBA to see the Exposing the Barriers in Architecture exhibition, from a FAME (Female Architects of Minority Ethnic) perspective, you can book a guided tour on 11 April, led by curator and founder of FAME, Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows. Another barrier young practitioners face is highlighted in Siraaj Mitha’s article for the AJ, An Architect’s working rights need to be integrated into their education.
This month, the architectural collective Unsettled Subjects, are holding an event at the Courtauld Institute on 24 April as part of their series Cultivating Hope: Conversations on Palestinian Art and Architecture to discuss dismantling systemic and structural legacies within and around the built environment.
In a similar vein, the Palestine Collective are hosting Hazem Jamjoum at Pelican House on 8 April where he will speak about preserving Palestinian stories through translation and literature, as well as delving deeper into the spatial strategies of colonial erasure. Another spatial mapping practice by architectural historian Samia Henni can be found in the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity at the Mosaic Rooms, expressing the ‘suppressed history of French colonial violence’ and its continued effect on Algeria.
One challenge that features in almost all current architectural discourse is housing. This month all housing enthusiasts should catch ‘London’s Favourite Architect’ Peter Barber at Temple Bar to hear him discuss his commitment to social good and how he would solve the housing crisis. From a different perspective, Webb-Ingall presents A Bedroom for Everyone at Peer Gallery – exploring the role of filmmaking in response to the UK housing crisis through the power of grassroots activism and the spaces that this work inhabits. Finally, the A Lot with Little exhibition at the AA showcases increasingly important solutions for housing and disaster relief by designers from around the globe.
With our own interest in play and the city, we couldn’t leave out the fantastic Takaharu + Yui Tezuka who will talk at the Barbican on 4 April about their buildings designed for children as part of the Architecture Foundation’s Architecture on Stage series.
Finally, from play spaces to another giver of joy – food: this month Open City release the second edition of London Feeds Itself, edited by Jonathan Nunn. We can’t wait to get our hands on a copy and take ourselves on a tasty tour of the capital’s rich ‘vernacular’ food culture.
