2025 Festival Theme: Voices

Architecture is not only about creation; it’s about listening, amplifying, and intertwining the voices that shape our spaces, stories, and neighborhoods. In a time where diverse perspectives are both essential and vulnerable, we must explore how different voices complement, contradict, and evolve together. What happens when we make space for those who have been underrepresented? How can these voices reshape the future of our cities?

How do we ensure that the right people are meaningfully in the room when key decisions are made? In light of tragedies like Grenfell and others across the world, what do we need to unlearn and rethink about who holds influence in architecture and how architecture is taught and thought about? How can we fix the representation gap in our industry, and within individual organizations and spaces, even after such recent wake-up calls? We invite our Festival community to engage in these uncomfortable, yet necessary, questions as we rethink how architecture is understood, spoken about, and practiced.

Too often, marginalised voices remain on the periphery, especially when it comes to the city’s most pressing challenges. How can we shift beyond superficial community engagement and instead build genuine collaboration, ensuring that all voices actively shape our cities? For young people in particular, how do we create systems where they are not just heard but lead, ensuring the future of our industry is truly inclusive?

LFA2025 calls on industry leaders to go beyond surface-level conversations. It’s time to confront the outdated structures that hold sway and explore alternative methods for both creating architecture and operating as organisations within architecture. It’s a time to rethink what constitutes an ‘architecture event’ and use mediums such as music, food, or performance, to make architectural conversations more accessible to all.

This year’s theme offers a platform to experiment with both the visible and invisible threads that shape our environments. Building on the progress already being made by key industry leaders, it’s time to highlight existing initiatives and encourage new partnerships to further inclusivity and innovation. Through events, installations, and dialogues, LFA2025 aims to connect diverse lived experiences in a collective effort to renew and reconnect our shared spaces. How can we use LFA to weave inclusivity, sustainability, and wellbeing into the fabric of our city? What can we learn from grassroots organisations, neighbourhood groups, and cross-industry collaborations that challenge the status quo? What innovative partnerships can help us create cities that are safe, inclusive, and joyful for everyone?

LFA2025 will once again bring together designers, activists, architects, engineers, and Londoners to shape the future of our city. We look forward to unpacking these ideas together ahead of our Open Call in January and Festival in June. Together, we can dismantle outdated systems, build more equitable spaces for all, and amplify voices long overlooked.

More info:

londonfestivalofarchitecture.org