26th Jun 2019

Partnering the London Festival of Architecture 2019

Following on from last year's 2018 festival which explored the theme of 'identity', we were thrilled to once again partner with the London Festival of Architecture for a second year, running 4 different events across the whole of June and exploring the theme of 'boundaries'.

The success of our events from 2018 saw us voted as a top 10 event by architectural, design and interior magazine giant, Dezeen. Our walking tours across the key festival hub London Bridge, proved hugely popular with architects, designers and members of the general public and we therefore decided to run them again for a second year!

This year we ran two different walking tours, one of which was focused on brick and stone materials and one on modern-day facade systems such as brick cladding, stone cladding, terracotta cladding and metal cladding.

Our brick tour (The River Thames - Creating Boundaries in Brickwork) aimed to explore how historical events have helped to shape the two halves of our capital city above and below the iconic River Thames and the contrast that can be seen in the materials used on the city's buildings. For example, in 1666, the Great Fire of London devastated acres of North London including thousands of homes, churches and the historic St Paul’s Cathedral. Buildings that were once made of wood, were destroyed and rebuilt using brick and stone.

Our facades tour (Elevating our Boundaries - Modern Facade Systems) focused on the growing demand for additional housing and commercial developments in London and the restriction of ground-level space. We explored how modern-day facade systems allow us to continue constructing high-rise buildings, whilst still being able to achieve the project design and vision, and blend with the local architectural style.

One of our new events for this year was a talk and debate focused on the boundaries between indoor and outdoor living.

We teamed up with award winning architects Stride Treglown and composite decking manufacturer Composite Prime in our open table event to discuss with our guests what we all thought to be the key considerations when creating or extending our living spaces. From the increasing pressures of urban living encouraging both commercial and domestic developments to make greater use of their outdoor spaces, to new legislation, technical specifications and the landscaping materials that are beginning to breakdown these boundaries!

For our final event, we teamed up with industry leading brick manufacturer Wienerberger and clay tile manufacturer Keymer to run a brick making workshop. The workshop explored the history of London stock bricks and explained the processes behind the manufacturing.

Attendees were then able to create their own bespoke bricks, tiles and figurines that could be engraved with their names, initials or personal drawings.

We would like to thank all of those who attended our events and hope everyone thoroughly enjoyed this year's festival!

To read more about the festival and this year's theme, click here.

To read more about the bricks we can supply, click here or for facade systems, click here.

To read more about our composite decking offering, click here.