The launch of LFA Digital responds to present circumstances, but will also reshape the London Festival of Architecture for the future, says director Tamsie Thomson

Buildings.

How can the London Festival of Architecture – the world’s largest annual architecture festival – celebrate one of humankind’s most tangible activities in a city in lockdown, or at least practicing social distancing? Every June, London’s streets are normally filled by the London Festival of Architecture’s programme of hundreds of events bringing architecture to a vast public audience. Now the capital’s streets are largely deserted and architects – like everyone else – are adapting to life online.

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Top: The Great LFA Pub Quiz – now online
Above: The [Online] Architecture Bake Off 

When lockdown’s heavy curtain descended in March, it looked grim for our mission to bring architecture to the LFA’s large public and professional audiences in London and around the world. Hope returned quickly, however, almost as soon as we announced our intention that the LFA’s traditional public events programme would return later in the year, once it is safe to do so. We were immediately struck by the response from the festival’s friends and supporters that the show – somehow – should go on, and with it many offers of help to make that happen. LFA Digital was quickly conceived and, when we issued a call for entries on 2 April, we waited to see what would happen.

We were immediately struck by the response from the festival’s friends and supporters that the show – somehow – should go on”

The result is quite remarkable: a rich programme of over 120 events encompassing everything from online building tours, talks and films to new digital artwork and the first ever online Architecture Bake Off. Everyone will be able to enjoy LFA Digital from 1-30 June at londonfestivalofarchitecture.org, on Instagram (@londonfestivalofarchitecture) and on Twitter (@LFArchitecture).

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A series of podcast interviews by KooZA/rch takes the Tottenham Pavilion competition as a starting point to discuss notions of public space, gentrification and forms of architectural production

LFA Digital is entirely in keeping with the festival’s track record of experimentation and, while writing this in the days ahead of the programme launch, it feels entirely like the right thing to do. It’s striking how quickly so much of our world has got used to a virtual existence – so much so that to have ‘gone dark’ in June without a digital manifestation of the LFA would have felt wrong and out of step with our rapidly changing times. It’s also a reflection of the LFA’s resilience that we have continued in this way.

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Top: the Architects Admit Confession Booth, coordinated by ACAN, allows penitent visitors to confess their environmental sins
Above: Architects Annalie Riches, Sarah Wigglesworth and Chloe Phelps discuss the power of social housing on 17 June

LFA Digital is an exciting new departure for the London Festival of Architecture, quickly conceived in response to the Covid-19 lockdown and the result of both an enthusiastic response by the festival’s amazing creative network and the hard work of my festival team. LFA Digital will by its nature be very different from the LFA’s traditional programme, but is already showing us how the ‘normal’ LFA will be different in the future too. It’s inconceivable that future editions of the LFA will not continue to embrace the digital as well as the physical, and for us this is critical as the LFA continues to develop its international profile. I hope we can be pioneers for other architecture events and festivals around the world too, in finding ways to make the intrinsically tangible accessible to new public audiences, wherever they may be.