The Architecture Foundation Presents: Making Spaces

  • thumbnail_We Made That_150_Hackney Wick Fish Island CEZ_engagement_0230_med

    Hackney Wick/Fish Island Creative Enterprise Zone engagement event, We Made That, 2018.

  • House for Artists

    APPARATA: House For Artists. Credit: Johan Dehlin.

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Past Event


This event was on Thur 7 April, 7pm

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Talk

How are architects creating new spaces for artistic practices in an urban landscape reshaped by the pandemic? What forms of innovative and equitable design might support artists? Holly Lewis, co-founder of the studio We Made That, leads a conversation exploring fresh possibilities for culture in our cities. She will be joined by Astrid Smitham, co-founder of APPARATA, and Yves Blais from Creative Land Trust. 

Coinciding with the exhibition A Century of the Artist’s Studio, the Architecture Foundation is developing a series of live conversations with architects and designers exploring the rich typology of the artist’s studio and the challenges of delivering studio provision today, which can be watched here.

In association with The Architecture Foundation. 

This event is part of our season Ways of Knowing: Work/Process.

 

About Holly Lewis / We Made That

Holly co-founded We Made That in 2006 – a practice of architects, urban designers and researchers. She cares deeply about locally-informed and impact-driven outcomes. She is a registered architect and affiliate member of the Landscape Institute. She has led a unique range of urban projects for the practice, from London-wide mapping of artists’ workspace through to delivery of culture-led regeneration projects. Holly advocates for community involvement within the design process, empowering women in the built environment and equitable city-making. 

About Astrid Smitham / APPARATA

Astrid Smitham is an architect, and the co-founder of East London practice APPARATA. Much of her work has been focused on both the provision of carefully considered community spaces in contexts that lack social cultural infrastructure, and creating places of creative work in a city where such places have become increasingly rare. Often these concerns are within the same project, with a focus on making the needs of the existing local community central, whilst working in conversation with artists to make spaces that work for them and the various aspects of their lives. The work looks for ways to design spaces where the people and communities that will occupy them have agency, and as such where the spaces are open and adaptable to the unknown.

The studio has recently completed A House for Artists, a new form of low rent co-housing combined with a community arts centre in Barking, London. APPARATA’s proposal is a new spatial model of housing, that provides shared spaces throughout with the aim of helping foster social relations inside and around the building. It is one of the Observer’s best 5 buildings of 2021, and has been covered in the Guardian, and The RIBA Journal amongst other places.

About Yves Blais / Creative Land Trust

Yves Blais is Operations Manager at Creative Land Trust. He manages the property portfolio and is currently leading the tender process and overseeing the fit out of 33,000 sf of affordable workspace in LB Hackney, as well as a further 7,000 sf in LB Newham. Yves has worked with Creative Land Trust since its inception and throughout his career, has worked with arts organisations in production, curatorial and brokerage roles. He is a Trustee at Forma Arts & Media and director at The Other MA.

Creative Land Trust was founded to tackle a long-standing problem for London, and indeed other global cities. The loss of affordable workspace, and consequent outflow of artists and makers, presents a serious threat to the wellbeing and prosperity of a city so reliant on creativity for its success.  As a charity, Creative Land Trust seeks to build a new financial and operating model to secure workspace that would otherwise be unattainable.

About The Architecture Foundation

The Architecture Foundation leads the conversation on the development of London and contributes to a global discourse about the architect’s changing role and responsibilities.  We pursue this mission through the delivery of an accessible public programme that makes space for emerging architects, groups historically underrepresented in the profession, and representatives of a wide range of related disciplines.  Exploring the architect’s capacity to combat climate change and systemic social inequalities represent central concerns of the programme.