Digital London Festival of Architecture, from the archive

Thursday 28 May 2020

The 2004 London Architecture Biennale - the progenitor of the London Festival of Architecture - was held in Clerkenwell. At that time, and is probably still today, Clerkenwell was home the highest concentration of architects of anywhere else in the world.

The HQ of the Biennale was the Farmiloe Building on St John Street which had previously been a builders’ merchants but was now awaiting redevelopment. The building was like the Marie Celeste - files were still on desks, charts still on the walls; the basement was full of copy invoices going back a century. The owner Tim Farmiloe lent us the building without charge. Tim’s atmospheric warehouses were the perfect venue for exhibitions, installations, lectures and parties.

Outside the building, St John Street was grassed over to create a temporary park. A small herd of longhorn cattle - the sort that would have been led down to Smithfield Market in the 18th century - were brought up from a farm in Wales and herded to a pen in the heart of Clerkenwell.

The event highlighted the history of the street, explained the reason for its widening, for its historic concentration of hostelries as well as proposing that it could be used for something better than four lanes of traffic.

The event attracted some 15,000 and its success was a signal that the event should continue into the future. Janet Street Porter said that it “made architecture accessible to thousands of people. For once architects managed the art of communication”.

Writing in the Architectural Review, Rob Gregory liked it to a village fete, while Alan Phillips, Chairman of the Architectural Education Trust said: “the entire event was dynamic in every respect and will surely grow into one of the most important events on the international architectural calendar.”

Phillips was right, of course. The Biennale was renamed the London Festival of Architecture in 2010 and has gone from strength to strength. But the aims remain the same - it is a festival which reaches out to the wider public, it is grounded in this city and it highlights the importance of high-quality public space, something which, as we emerge from the current pandemic, will be seen to be more even important than ever.

View the London Festival of Architecture's 2020 digital programme here.