Bartlett Tutor Nasios Varnavas & Alumna Era Savvides Win London Festival of Architecture Competition

The competition, titled “Navigating Change: Reimagining the Square Mile”, was part of a wider brief by the London Festival of Architecture to reimagine public spaces across London in temporary and playful ways that engage the public and lead into thoughtful, longer-term change. Architects, designers and artists were invited to submit proposals for public realm interventions to be displayed during this year’s festival, taking place in June. 

Urban Radicals, design/fabrication company Millimetre and engineering company AKTII, who collaborated on the winning entry, took inspiration from the Square Mile’s 2,000-year history and its Roman roots to reinvent the concept of “Square” into a multi-faceted backdrop for public discussions, knowledge exchange, community and inclusion. 

Their intervention is called "Street Assemblies for the Square Mile". The proposal brings civic functions out of enclosed buildings into the public realm, increasing their visibility and encouraging public participation and dialogue. Together, the three companies have created four public works which will be distributed across four City of London business improvement districts (BIDs) and cultural quarters during the festival:

1. Speaker's Plinth for Aldgate BID - a series of plinths which reference the adjacent Roman Wall remains and encourage people to speak up and perform.
2. The Voicing Pod and Seed Museum for Eastern Cluster BID - a small pod for two-person podcasts on architecture, the city, social equity and material sustainability, as well as a display of seeds in pin-up format, narrating stories of migration and cultural exchange in London.
3. Roundtable for Culture Mile BID - a table for discussion, deliberation, eating and gathering together, which ties narratives of the nearby Smithfield Market and the Barbican.
4. Assembly for Fleet Street Quarter BID - a public auditorium which references a parliament and brings it to the street and to the people, for public deliberation, debate, summer screenings, performance, theatre and larger gatherings.

Founding partners Era Savvides and Nasios Varnavas launched London-based architecture and design practice Urban Radicals in 2019. The practice also includes Bartlett Architecture MArch graduate Amy Kempa. Era and Nasios are both Bartlett alumni, and Nasios is also a design tutor for Architecture MArch unit PG17 with Yeoryia Manolopoulou and Tamsin Hanke. Urban Radicals curated and designed the Cyprus Pavilion National Participation at the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice 2021. They were named as one of the Best New Architecture Practices for 2021 by Archdaily, and were selected to be one of six Young Architects in Residence at the Architecture Foundation London for 2021-22. Last year their project "A Brick for Venice" was long-listed at the Dezeen Sustainability Awards, and displayed at the Design Museum London as part of their How to Build a Low Carbon Home exhibition.

Street Assemblies for the Square Mile will be launched in the first week of June.

More information

• Read more at The London Festival of Architecture website
• Visit Urban Radicals' website 
• Visit Millimetre's website
• Visit AKTII's website
• Find out more about Architecture MArch

Image: Poster for Street Assemblies for the Square Mile, Urban Radicals