Architecture Foundation Exchange, Summary and Consideration of a Local Architecture Foundation

EVERYDAY EXTREME: From October 17-21, 2011, an exchange programme took place between a group of emerging British and Australian practices, conducted by the Architecture Foundation, London, and supported by the NSW Architects Registration Board and funded by the Byera Hadley Travelling Schollarship Fund. This report summarises the events of the exchange programme and concludes by establishing a set of 10 principles learnt from the exchange, applicable to socially engaged architectural organizations in Australia:

Principle #1 – Promoting Architecture is not the main thing
Principle #2 – Engage with other forms of culture

And so on…

The exchange placed emphasis on socially engaged practice and offered a window into unique and productive relationships between the Architecture Foundation, Red Room Theatre, South Kilburn Studios, Design for London and Better Bankside; working together to wrestle with the complexities of the city and improve its social and built fabric.

A key lesson that I took from the exchange were that for an architectural organization to be effective it need not focus on promoting architecture. Rather, if it focuses on making a positive social impact through architecture and design culture, architecture will be more effectively promoted as a result, not an aim.

It also become clear that if an organization has a social transformation as its underlying goal, support and opportunities can be obtained from across government and other organizations; land, permissions, materials, volunteers, good will. These would be denied to a more privately motivated enterprise.

Finally, the firestarter events produced by the Red Room Theatre have opened to me a new and vital mode of social engagement; based around creating event formats that skillfully disarm tensions, allow for new relationships to be formed and innovations found.

Read the report for more. . .

Andrew Burns