London Festival of ARchitecture History - 2025 - Voices

This June saw the launch of Art Park – the transformation of part of a car park space into a vibrant new creative hub for culture, collaboration, and community in Harrow Town Centre. Following a launch party, the hub hosted a series of start-ups and creatives, and led a series of talks, tours, exhibitions and workshops. The programme brought together locals and visitors alike to listen, collaborate and dialogue – and created spaces for lesser heard voices and stories.  

2025 saw the first LFA takeover at the Now Gallery in Greenwich Peninsula. Through a series of three exhibitions, the gallery created a unique space for intimate and global conversation. The exhibitions started with an exploration of matrilineal legacies - challenging the traditional boundaries of architecture from Black Females in Architecture on the ground floor, before moving to a collaboration between the Just City Working Group Kenya and Citizen Architects - tracing the colonial origins of inequality in Kenyan and rethinking participation in planning, and ending with a display of models and archival content raising awareness of Somali heritage sites. 

Following on from a competition with The Fitzrovia Partnership, this project saw a series of 9 unique benches placed in key sites across Fitzrovia. The project invited emerging architects, designers, and artists to create innovative seating solutions for Fitzrovia’s public spaces. Each bench focused on amplifying the local ‘Voices’ of Fitzrovia, promoting circular economy principles and incorporating the use of playful, creative forms and experimental materials, through reclaimed, reused, and recycled components.

Find out more about the project here.

2025 saw the centenary anniversary of the Brentford Golden Mile, and a first for LFA as we head to Hounslow for the first time as a key Festival location. The programme celebrated 100 years since the inception of the Great West Road and invited everyone in to reimagine its future. From tours of iconic buildings to hyper focused workshops, the Festival activities closely shaped the future of the area. One of the events saw a tour of the former GSK HQ building, led by those tasked with reimagining the site, followed by a ‘canal cruise’ workshop rethinking transport in the area, and ending at the iconic Brentford Canal Festival.

Studio Lates returned for LFA2025, with four clusters of studios opening up their doors across four Thursdays of the month. During two of the evenings Narrative Practice led special tours which provided a deeper background to the neighbourhoods surrounding the studios. The tours, primarily aimed at young people from underrepresented background, explored ideas of shifting thresholds, examined how architecture and development dictate who belongs and whose voices endure.

‘Whispers’ was a sculptural response to the LFA2025 theme of ‘Voices’ by Polish designer Oskar Zięta, located in the heart of the Fleet Street Quarter. Launched during the Festival’s opening event - and featuring a live inflation demonstration by Zieta Studio - the piece showcased their pioneering fabrication technology. Whispers was commissioned by Fleet Street Quarter and part of the UK/Poland Cultural and Creative Season. 

The London Cancer Hub is a key project working to deliver an ecosystem of labs, research and community facilities and keyworker accommodation – to create a world leading sustainable district for excellence in cancer research. During LFA2025, attendees had the chance to hear from the voices involved in the project, go behind the scenes on unique lab tours at the Institute of Cancer Research hubs and Maggie’s building, and see the space activated with a special dance performance by the local Sutton Community Dance group.

Wolves Lane Horticulture Centre reopened its grounds for LFA2025, with an opportunity to see inside their new eco-buildings, hear from those involved and learn about how the space works. Following a construction tour the previous year, attendees had the chance to see how local spaces such as Wolves Lane shape – one seed at a time – the food system and communities in the area.

2025 marked the Borough of Culture coming to Wandsworth. This workshop - led by local historian Jeanne Rathbone and Chocolate Films – celebrated the neighbourhoods and communities in Clapham Junction and captured personal responses to the area on film. The event is part of the lead up to the delivery of the Falcon Road Underpass revitalisation later in the autumn. 

Find out more about the revitalisation project here.

Marking two years open in our public gallery - The London Centre – we hosted a series of activities across the month, alongside a prototype of the nearby ‘Whispers’ installation. Starting with archival exhibitions with the Guildhall Library and mentoring sessions with Narrative Practice and hosting a series of global talks including on Partition and South Asian History, the month then closed with a literal closure of our road for a 3-day activation of events.