Three weekends, 16 days, over 300 events, 250,000 visitors, star names and an unrivalled variety and vibrancy of installations, exhibitions, debates and dialogue, the biennial London Festival of Architecture (LFA) returns to the capital with a bang

This year’s London Festival of Architecture, ‘The Welcoming City’, takes place from 19 June to 4 July 2010. A city-wide celebration of architecture in the capital, the Festival will host a series of events to highlight London’s status as an international architectural hub. Centrally curated by three leading LFA organisations, The Architecture Foundation, New London Architecture and RIBA London, the project will be run in partnership with a number of institutions including the British Council, London Metropolitan University and Open House and will comprise three key weekends over the Festival period.

Central: Nash Ramblas

19 and 20 June

The West End Hub ‘Nash Ramblas’, is centred around Portland Place and Regent Street and the Royal Parks. It highlights possibilities for an improved pedestrian route along the Nash Plan of 1810 for Regents Park and Regent Street. Other events include a 48 hour talks programme in Park Crescent, and exhibition in Regents park telling the Nash story, shop windows installations, a BBC Broadcasting House Building Tour and Royal Academy workshops. A series of solar operated hydraulic lifts will also illustrate the issue of disabled access, transporting wheelchair users from Waterloo steps to Waterloo place, while uniting the hub is an iPhone application guide. The West End Weekend is coordinated by RIBA London.

East: High Street 2012

26 and 27 June

The East End of London between Whitechapel and Stratford will host High Street 2012, representing the last 6km of the London Olympic Marathon in 2012, as well as a wider streetscape and regeneration strategy.  It will also host a series of Festival activities including a new commission from critically-acclaimed Austrian architects Feld72 reviving a vacant town centre building, guided tours of the dynamic area in historic Routemaster buses, and interactive installations designed and built by international architecture students. The East End Weekend is coordinated by The Architecture Foundation.

South: Bankside Urban Forest

3 and 4 July

The final weekend of the Festival brings focus to the area stretching between the culturally vibrant South bank of the River Thames and the Elephant and Castle neighbourhood further south. Taking its cues from Witherford Watson Mann architects’ Bankside Urban Forest scheme, it will create multiple opportunities for exchange between Festival visitors and local residents. Festival activities include a theatre built from locally-sourced recycled materials by German architects Köbberling and Kaltwasser a pop-up cookery school at Borough Market, and guerrilla gardening projects. There will also be tours of the Tate Modern oil tanks, guided walks exploring urban biodiversity of the area, and lectures by leading thinkers in architecture and urban design including Jan Gehl, Foster+Partners and Arup. The Southbank and Bankside Weekend is coordinated by The Architecture Foundation.

Love Your Street

The Festival programme will also highlight community schemes that pose solutions to current political needs, such as ‘Love Your Street’, an initiative to encourage residents to share ideas on improving their neighbourhoods and the Urban Island project, which aims to map and revive empty spaces across London, working with Southwark schools to transform them into spaces that young people could use.

International Architecture Showcase

The British Council and the Architecture Foundation are bringing together a broad spectrum of exciting international architecture projects within the International Architecture Showcase programme. This project will see more than 30 Embassies and Cultural Institutes around London presenting a series of exhibitions, installations, events and talks programmes to highlight the dynamic architectural projects that are emerging from their respective countries and to address the theme of the ‘The Welcoming City’. As the UK’s international body for cultural relations, the British Council is delighted to be working with a large number of international partners on such diverse projects, which shown within the context of the Festival will provide a platform for dialogue in relation to the work of UK-based practices producing architecture for a welcoming city.

The International Architecture Student FestivalStudents from international schools of architecture and design from countries including Australia, Austria, Italy, Lebanon, Turkey and the United Kingdom have been working on their designs for interventions in public spaces along High Street 2012 and in Bankside Urban Forest.  The students will work together with local communities to make site-specific interventions that respond to the Student Festival theme of ‘Make do and Mend’ and ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ to highlight key environmental issues. They will also also act as signposts to LFA 2010.  The projects will be presented to a panel drawn from a wide cross section of the architecture and design community at a public Review at the Whitechapel Gallery on Monday 28th June 2010. The International Architecture Student Festival is delivered in partnership by London Metropolitan University and The Architecture Foundation.

The London Festival of Architecture Founding Director Peter Murray said, “This is an exciting period in which to hold the Festival of Architecture.  Although the economic downturn has slowed development, it has given us a chance to think about what sort of architecture we want in the future. People have the time and inclination to debate these issues and we are looking forward to a very lively two weeks in the summer. At the same time, many UK architects are busy working around the world and form an important part of London’s creative economy. The Open Studios programme will give the public a chance to see the work that our leading practices are doing.”