London Festival of Architecture director Tamsie Thomson explains this year’s theme – boundaries – and previews some of the ways it has been interpreted

Buildings.

‘London Festival of Architecture’
1–30 June 2019
Various locations
Details: londonfestivalofarchitecture.org

To live in cities is to be surrounded by boundaries: fences, walls, roads, zones and city limits. Boundaries can make us comfortable. They define us: they keep us in our place. From suburban semis with privet hedges to Georgian townhouses with their basement moats, the British have always used architecture to express their love of boundaries: the rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate. Look around London and everywhere you will see the architectural signals that define people past and present, their place in society, and the distribution of property.

Perhaps Brexit is a logical extension of that British desire to retreat within a national boundary – to find an imagined comfort zone and put the rest of the world in its place. But architecture in Britain – and London in particular – isn’t always so insular. London’s architects have long stepped outside national boundaries to build around the world, all the while pushing the boundaries of what a building should look like and what engineering can do.

Boundaries have always been a fundamental aspect of the human world. Life in cities is governed by both physical and perceived boundaries. For spatial practitioners, boundaries are more than mundane facts of everyday life ­– they are something to explore and challenge.

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An LFA symposium at the Royal Academy (14 June), ‘Thresholds or barriers? Perspectives on boundaries and architecture’, includes a keynote conversation between Farshid Moussavi and Eyal Weizman.

This year’s London Festival of Architecture symposium at the Royal Academy, for example, offers a rich exploration of the role and application of boundaries in architecture and placemaking, through two expert panels and a keynote conversation. Building on specific case studies ranging from the North London Eruv – an area within which orthodox Jews can move more freely on the sabbath ­– to the divisions of Northern Ireland, the event will debate the impact of tangible boundaries on our day-to-day physical experience of the city and the role of intangible boundaries in our understanding of the built environment and spaces around us, examining everything from role the Dayton Peace Agreement played in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s built environment, to the future of architectural heritage in the age of digital technologies.

And of course the festival takes place in London, a city whose own boundaries expanded to swallow multiple villages whose vestiges still remain. How do we really define those original settlements, or even the new areas we have created: where does Hoxton end and Shoreditch begin? Perhaps boundaries within cities are made to be blurred? In a city where postcode boundaries can have deadly significance, how might architecture shape a city that is safer and more at ease with its diversity?

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The Lockside Supper Club (ph: Albert Mensah) is among more than 400 events that make up the festival. The LFA was launched in 2004 and last year attracted an audience of over 600,000 people.

How these boundaries can be visualised is explored at the Royal Docks History Club, where ‘A History of Maps and Boundaries’ looks at historic depictions of the area to show how ancient boundaries shape lives today. Meanwhile the ‘Contemporary Cartography’ exhibition’ at the Building Centre examines how we navigate, document and shape our own built environment.

London Wall will see Historic England walking the line of the Roman city wall. In the heart of a city that long ago broke out from behind those stones, we ask where is London’s boundary today? Will the city’s relentless growth, driven by its economic strength, see it burst beyond the M25? And what then of the Green Belt?

London’s internal boundaries are further examined in ‘Faultlines’, an interactive installation by Studio Egret West which explores the sometimes-forgotten edges of local authorities. These borderland spaces are made peripheral by administrative lines but make their presence real and felt in many other ways. Similarly, ‘Within or Without’ is a walking tour of the wards of the City of London that further explores the contemporary impact of these historic administrative and political lines.

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‘Contempoary Cartography’ is at the Building Centre, London, until 30 August (ph: ScanLAB Projects).

Among other invisible boundaries are those that operate within the architectural profession. Efforts to transcend them, and smash glass ceilings, are explored by ‘Breaking Boundaries – Architectures of Inclusion’ at the Royal Academy. Close to my own heart – and an issue that the LFA’s Elephant Campaign has helped to shed light on – is the transgression of personal boundaries. ‘This Space is Mine’ explores issues around safe spaces for women, as well as questions about gender and behaviour that arise.

From the morbid (‘Architecture for the Dead’ is one of several events looking at the ultimate boundary beween life and death) to the epicurial (check out the Lockside Supper Club) and the comic (Nic Monisse’s stand-up gig on boundaries on is a must-see), it’s all here in the 2019 LFA programme.

It is however important to remember that even festivals have a serious side and the LFA is no exception. We are here to champion the work of those 22,000 Londoners who work in architecture, to celebrate the £1.9bn gross value added that our industry brings into the city. And at a time of so much political uncertainty, celebrating, supporting and promoting the value of architecture is more crucial than ever.

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