Reclaiming the city: London School of Architecture Student Show 2023

‘We’re very much the London School of Architecture’, says John Nahar, engagement manager at the LSA, on my visit to Hackney Depot for this year’s student show.

This year’s exhibition is a departure from previous LSA shows – held at the Holy Trinity Church in Dalston last year and, before that, at the school’s home on Orsman Road. Drawings have been clipped up simply with stationary along two aisles and a wooden frame along the middle.

Hackney bus depot. Photo: Gino Spocchia

Graduating Part 2 students from LSA’s seventh cohort had seven themes to consider as part of Close to Home – collect, support, freedom, animate, celebrate, persevere and shift – thereby removing the rigidity of typologies such as ‘home’, ‘community’ or ‘health’.

An information board at the front of the room says the brief was to consider the 'layers, systems, networks, politics, history and memory of place, and importantly, how these mould together, or collide' Students were also asked to address current design, social, political and environmental issues: the cost of carbon, the cost of living, the cost of doing design itself? Or as Nahar describes it: ‘radical reality’.

One thesis, which imagines an airborne athletics track suspended above Broadgate Square, was a response to the commercialisation of the City, sedentary office life and plans lodged by Herzog & de Meuron to refurbish the Victorian terminus, its creator, Cassius Cracknell, tells me.

The London School of Architecture degree show. Photo: Gino Spocchia 

‘The idea is to create provocative and evocative experiences people won’t want to deny,’ he explains. ‘So the 400m track in the sky, who’s not wanting to go on that? The point is even the most sedentary people will have to chance to get up, lace up.’

He adds: ‘The idea here was to say, “look, here’s a commercial estate that is kind of inherently terrible” for all the different kind of metrics I measured it against. My solution is to inject lots of public space into a space that is not really for the public.’

The Feel Good Factory by Cassius Cracknell

Other examples of ‘alternative visions for architecture and life’ – as the introduction board sets out - include a retrofit of Bastion House in the City of London and another at east London’s Cranbrook Estate, designed in 1964 by architects Francis Skinner, Douglas Bailey and Berthold Lubetkin.

‘It aims to rethink the management of maintenance of estates in Tower Hamlets borough,’ says George Kelly of an imagined new council-run homes agency. ‘It trains residents in accredited apprenticeships and then employs them to repair and maintain estates.’

Kelly says retrofit hubs speak to the need for residents, built-environment professionals and local authorities to be skilled-up to meet the climate emergency, allowing for the future proofing of the scheme at a time when other estates are being flattened.

The Tower Hamlets Custodians by George Kelly. Photo: Gino Spocchia 

The two projects, like many in this show, respond to issues around reappropriating increasing amounts of non-public space and threatened council homes for the benefit of community.

As for the community on its doorstep, LSA has begun a journey with its ‘Part 0 programme’ to create ‘an industry-aligned programme of initiatives that 13-to-19-year-olds can engage in to unlock design talent and inspire them into a career in the built environment,’ Nahar tells me.

While it is not a direct pathway to a place at the LSA, it has already delivered a pavilion in nearby Hoxton Square with local school children.

‘It’s sadly a very expensive profession and very elite,’ adds Nahar. ‘Making it accessible is one thing, but making it affordable is another’.

Models at the student show. Photo: Gino Spocchia

On diversity, the LSA has beat targets and the number of students from ethnic and traditionally underrepresented backgrounds is growing. Still, the school wants to do more and an EPQ programme for school leavers is in the works.

The ambition is that one day, a Part 0 participant may find themselves on the walls at a future showcase – venue yet to be confirmed.

In September, the LSA is welcoming its largest-ever intake, which Nahar says is ‘encouraging’. It certainly is considering there were 50 first-year students a year ago and 67 in this year’s graduating cohort (although results were due out the day after my visit).

Steve Logan from Gateshead College leads the PlanBEE programme that sits within the Part 0 initiative. He says the scheme is a way of building-up experiences across the built environment sector and getting rid of the silo mindset that adds yet another barrier to the profession. Ryder Architecture is also involved.

Student work lines the walls of Hackney Depot. Photo: Gino Spocchia

The figures reflect both a bounce-back from the pandemic an,d according to the LSA, a sign of the school’s overhaul of student recruitment to reach out to Part 1s who might not have been aware of the LSA until now.

The LSA now has flag-fliers across the profession with students in this year’s show currently with practices such as HTA Design, Buckley Gray Yeoman and Denizen Works.

When I think about what makes the projects in this show stand out, it is not only the act of reclaiming space and a demand for all bits of the city to be ‘public’, or for homes and housing associations to operate for the benefit of residents, but the act of giving back. Be that through play, education, or community groups. ‘We don’t ask for moon colonies,’ Nahar says.

The London School of Architecture degree show, Close to Home, ran from 17-24 June at Hackney Depot in east London