POST PRESS: That’s a Wrap on Our Public Programme with the Architecture Foundation

The programme spanned an eclectic mix of subjects, from clients and conservation to queer histories, club culture, Scottish ceilidhs and clay.

At its centre was New Architects 5, the latest volume in the Architecture Foundation’s landmark series of guides to the UK’s best emerging practices. Published on 16 June and featuring 93 practices, the book provided the starting point for the programme. The temporary installation was designed and fabricated by RAFT – Jos Myles Geczy and Rosa Nussbaum – using more than 200 aluminium offset printing plates, the same plates used to print the book’s 576 pages.

Throughout the summer, the courtyard and studio also served as a library and bookshop, with New Architects 5 and titles donated by the featured practices available to browse. The programme formed part of our wider transformation as we prepared for a fuller public relaunch in autumn. In the spirit of Zaha’s insistence that there should be no end to experimentation, Bowling Green Lane became a space for a new generation of architects and designers to explore new ways of gathering, making and thinking.

The programme opened with Clients, which examined the client’s role from two contrasting perspectives: the visionary private developer who reshaped London’s commercial landscape, and the public infrastructure that once put professional design services directly into the hands of communities. Sir Stuart Lipton spoke with General Office about a career spent transforming large sites into places of lasting metropolitan consequence. Meanwhile, Unit 38 explored the legacy of Community Technical Aid Centres and asked how a design service for the people might be rebuilt today.

Craft and Conservation brought together conservation architects, fabricators and makers to examine the knowledge embedded in historic buildings and the people whose hands shape them. Conversations with Julian Harrap, James Pockson and Neal Shasore challenged conventional approaches to conservation, while JIGS, a pop-up exhibition by the designers of POST PRESS, explored London’s fabrication economy. James Woodcock discussed the making of V&A East and the experience of the tradespeople who turn architectural ideas into built reality.

Images of Architecture brought together photographers, architects and publishers to explore how images shape the way we see and think about the world we build. Events included an urban photography workshop, a printing workshop with Studio Bua, a live recording of the Scaffold podcast with Michael Mack, and a day of close readings in which twenty photographers each shared a single image.

Encounters explored bodies in motion, queer histories, shared spaces and the chemistry of meeting strangers. An open-mic night organised by the AF Young Trustees’ Spatial Queeries group, experimental LGBT+ life-drawing sessions and a design-minded singles night asked how architecture can frame intimacy, otherness and play.

Performance explored the built environment as stage, setting and script. From club culture, with badweather in conversation with Ben Kelly, and community football, with Maximillian Worrell on Clapton CFC, to experimental drama and the launch of Magma 95: Architecture, the programme asked what architecture performs, who it performs for, and what remains when the curtain falls.

Later, Field Trip shifted the focus to practices, places and publics beyond London. Rather than treating the regions as peripheral, the programme explored how independent publishing, Scottish social ritual and the majlis as a form of hospitality offer alternative ways of thinking about architecture beyond metropolitan conventions. Events included a zine fair and conversation presented by Other People’s Dreams, a Friday-night ceilidh introduced by Roz Barr, and a majlis-style afternoon hosted by Msoma, exploring home, belonging and cross-cultural hybridity.

In its seventh week, Clay turned to clay as material, vessel, architecture and memory. THING presented Touch Earth, an exhibition of thirty donated ceramic objects. Of Architecture transformed the courtyard into a temporary Phantom Tea Room, complete with a printed curtain and daily Gongfu tea sessions led by Yanwu. Talks, tastings and hands-on workshops – including brick-making, mis-guided tea tasting, hand-building with wild UK clay and free-form coiling – explored clay’s enduring role in domestic life, collective ritual and the city. A conversation about the new museum Clay 1A extended this exploration.

The programme concluded with a series of events looking towards the city and the next generation: a panel on unlocking vacant buildings for cultural production, a discussion on competition culture, the family workshop Kid City, and a celebratory party accompanied by a limited-edition publication documenting the entire series.

We’re grateful to the Architecture Foundation, the 93 practices featured in New Architects 5, and everyone who joined us throughout the summer.

POST PRESS was a fitting way to spend our final season before Bowling Green Lane’s own transformation, offering a glimpse of the exchange and experimentation the refurbished building is designed to support.