Love Architecture Festival 2012

The car park of myhotel (not my lower-case lettering) in Brighton’s North Laine is an unlikely location for an architecture-themed gallery. But its use is exactly in line with the subject of the event, Threshold, which will run from 20-24 June. For my sins, I will be talking about housing on Saturday 23 and my friend Amy Smith will be talking terracotta on the Sunday.

Threshold is being held to coincide with the RIBA’s Love Architecture Festival 2012 to demonstrate “how architects and associated creative professionals can adapt, reuse, transform and re-invent the spaces around us”. As residents of Brighton & Hove, each of us is all too aware of the constraints of our land- and sea-locked city.

“Architects need to find a Jamie Oliver among them”

Several local architectural practices that I am fond of already are either organising or taking part in the event. The list of organisers includes Chalk Architecture, a firm that I have written about several times, most recently for award-winning work on the Wilbury Road branch of Small Batch Coffee. Also involved is a:b:i:r architects (their lower-case lettering and colons – I can’t keep up), whose work for Brighton Housing Trust on Oriental Place was the topic of a recent column. Jim Stephenson, the popular architectural photographer, Richard Wolfstrome,
an incredibly passionate and versatile designer, and Push Studios, are all helping out too. Cara Courage is curator.
Whilst I don’t want to give too much away, as the goal is ultimately to attract visitors, I am certainly intrigued to see just what Paul Nicholson at Chalk will be doing with the caravan that he has just purchased for £100.

As I write, my own 30 minute talk on housing is close to completion. After playing around with various ideas, we settled on ‘Building an image: Why the RIBA should accommodate a poster boy’ as a title. I am going to be giving my thoughts on why the public simply do not look forward to development, and why architects need to find a Jamie Oliver from amongst themselves – rather than let Kevin McCloud from Grand Designs do all of the work.

If you want to come to Threshold, check out www.thresholdarchitecturehub.com for details of the various exhibits and talks. To hear my ideas on housing, just turn up at the car park of myhotel on Jubilee Street in Brighton at 2.30pm (for a 3pm start) on Saturday 23 June. No tickets – or capital letters – are required.

robert@buildingopinions.com
www.buildingopinions.com