Inaugural Liverpool Architecture Festival coming in October
The celebration of the city region’s architectural community will spotlight some of Liverpool’s best buildings while also providing opportunities for networking and learning.
Launching on 4 October, the two-week festival will include a variety of free-to-attend events and activities, including design competitions, workshops, and lectures. Studios across the city will be open as well.
A special symposium during LAF will make the case for the buildings that should be listed in the future, while a competition will challenge architects to design the best post-Covid town house for a £4,000 prize.
The festival will also include a variety of walking tours, including one centred on Herbert Rowse, the architect behind Hope Street’s Philharmonic Hall, Martins Bank and the India Buildings. Another tour will celebrate the city’s modernist architecture.
“This festival will help stimulate the debate around what ‘good’ design is and how we can best use our public spaces,” said Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region. “We can’t build back better unless we also start to build better too.”
Mathew Giles, founder of the festival and director of MGMA Architects, said: “The LAF is a great opportunity for Liverpool architects to come out swinging post-Covid.
“We recognise that Liverpool has received some negative architecture and construction press recently, and the festival is an excellent opportunity for us to come together and highlight the existing design talent that we have in the city region.
“The inaugural festival is focussed. Through a mixture of free to attend lectures, workshops, charrettes, tours, and presentations we will build an architectural community. Architects presenting to architects will allow for the sharing of information, and experiences, resulting in a higher level of discourse, and ultimately a better-quality built environment for the Liverpool City Region.”
You can learn more about the festival by visiting laf-uk.com.
Great work Mat, looking forward to this!
By Anonymous
Liverpool has such a great academic history regarding architecture , with the School of Architecture being founded in 1895, There were some great city surveyors and architects , including Sir Lancelot Keay who oversaw the construction of some great housing projects , including some great blocks of flats many of which were design classics but have since been demolished and it is only now people realise their worthiness.
Luckily a number still remain and stand proud and occupied, if only today`s housing bothered about design and quality, instead of the cheap, faceless boxes that exist now , including those awful low-rise dwellings right in the middle of town along Park Lane , built in the Hatton era, that had no sense of place or design .
By Anonymous
Well done Mat, great idea.
By Col F