ZHF participates in London Festival of Architecture 2025
Thank you to everyone who visited us as part of the 2025 London Festival of Architecture programme.
We hosted five events, including a drop-in family day designed and led by writers Yuki Sumner and Michaela Nettell, and architects Héloïse Le Carrer (IF_DO) and Takeshi Hayatsu (Hayatsu Architects), where children aged 5-12 and their parents/carers discovered the work of Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara and built their own models of his celebrated Umbrella House.
We also hosted a panel discussion and film screening that launched Michaela Nettell’s new book, which brought together fresh interpretations of Kazuo Shinohara’s 1961 Umbrella House by a group of women working across fine art, filmmaking, creative writing, architecture and Japanese calligraphy. The artist’s 8mm film study of Umbrella House was screened alongside excerpts from Emily Richardson’s HOUSE WORKS, a trilogy of artist’s films about prototype houses built in East Anglia in the 1960s by architects known to be interested in cultural currents in Japan, and artist Emily Speed’s Tate Liverpool-commissioned film Flatland (2021).
Moreover, we hosted a salon that brought together architecture and design practitioners and researchers exploring the histories of architecture and motherhood in twentieth century Britain. Combining new research with individual experiences, these speakers considered the relationship between professional and personal selves.
In addition, we hosted DisOrdinary Architecture’s 18th birthday and a screening of animated short films with My Utopia, which aims to amplify the voices of disabled and/or neurodivergent individuals, whose perspectives are often marginalised due to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ mentality.
Thank you to all the collaborators: Yuki Sumner, Héloïse Le Carrer, Takeshi Hayatsu, Michaela Nettell, Emily Richardson, Emily Speed, My Utopia, DisOrdinary Architecture, Anne Thorne, Cathy Hawley, Marianna Jano, Alexandra Banister, Cat Rossi and Kim Trogal.
We look forward to taking part in the London Festival of Architecture again next year.