Celebrating and exploring architecture's relationship with the diverse cultures and contemporary conditions of South Africa … A week of exhibitions, performances, films and multi-disciplinary conferences. Bringing architecture back to the public domain

Architecture ZA 2010 offers a week-long festival under the auspices of the South African Institute of Architects. It proposes to relocate architecture within the contemporary conditions and cultural production of South Africa. Local and international architects, as well as a wide collection of creative minds engaged in the imaging and production of the city - from filmmakers to urban geographers, space politicians to community organizers, philosophers to fashion critics - will be put into energetic contact. They will respond to a range of themes and topics designed to encourage the intersection of multi-disciplinary voices with architects and architecture.

Architecture ZA 2010 will engage with a wide, popular reach of interests to which sponsors and the general public can relate. Top international names, varied platforms for debate and a multitude of performances and events will ensure critical mass and major exposure.

International participation is built around a model of personal interaction which will produce various bodies of work. Twelve acclaimed international architects and theorists whose interests coincide with our own will participate in EVENT+CITY, the fresh and challenging festival conference. They will lecture and also participate in panel discussions focused around the contemporary challenges facing architecture. A multi-disciplinary cast of thinkers will sit on panels with them, offering new takes on old problems, unlocking debate and offering new ways of viewing the city.

This international participation will culminate in a series of Design Master Classes for which both architecture students and professionals will gain Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points (required to remain registered by the South African institute of Architects) in an experimental and optimistic atmosphere of design thinking centered around lively experimentation with our urban futures. The strategy is to form interactive and productive ties between local and international practitioners, theorists, students and teachers.

The festival also encompasses an array of banner events and exhibitions across Johannesburg. These range from poetry readings to walking tours of the city, music concerts to displays of rare photographic archives, international architecture exhibitions to performance art. No fewer than seven award ceremonies and competitions will punctuate Architecture ZA 2010. The Architect Africa Film Festival 2010 aims to draw a wide public audience to documentaries, docu-dramas and feature films about architecture, cities and the environments in which we live. Organized by the Architects' Collective, the films will be screened in architecturally inspiring venues across Johannesburg.