A month after launching our podcast: Tottenham Pavilion Conversations we meet again with the Tottenham pavilion team to discuss and reflect on the inspiring individual conversations we have engaged in and the digitalisation of the pavilion as part of the London Festival of Architecture 2020.

In late January 2020, a call out to design a new kind of public space in the shape of a Pavilion went live. The self-titled competition, Tottenham Pavilion, was open to applicants from all walks of life - from artists to architects, student to establish practices. With initial expectations of between 15-20 applicants, the organisers were overwhelmed when over 1000 people registered interest worldwide. To ensure applicants understood the context, designing a Pavilion within a warehouse based community - a website full of resources was created and localised events were held. Today we invite the Tottenham Pavilion organisers to talk to the winning design team.

The Tottenham Pavilion organisers were always clear that they needed a panel of experts to judge the competition. They needed people from the architectural sector and the locality to judge both the feasibility of the structure and its potential relationship with the Harringay Warehouse District and neighbouring communities. The organisers also wanted to capture local reactions to the designs and hosted a ‘Community Vote’ to gauge reactions. In total seven judges were involved, four from leading architectural practices, two from the Harringay Warehouse District and one with insight around Tottenham’s creative sector. Today we meet Katy Marks, from Citizens Design Bureau, Aida Esposito, Creative Industries Consultant, and Ryan Hughes, Harringay Warehouse District tenant and architect in his own right.

In late January 2020, a call out to design The Tottenham Pavilion went live, engaging more than 1000 people and resulting in the submission of 166 entries from creatives worldwide. Since 2016 CHART Architecture engages in a 72-hour competition, inviting postgraduate students or newly graduated architects, designers and artists working in the Nordic region to explore and challenge the crossovers between art, design and architecture through realising temporary pavilions. 

Architecture competitions are much more than just a format, but rather spaces of true experimentation for the discipline itself. Beyond the world of academia these can be catalysts for research where ideas are put forward and boundaries are challenged. My name is Federica Zambeletti, founder of KooZA/rch, and in this podcast l will be in conversation with Carolina and James from the Tottenham Pavilion, as well as Nanna Hjortenberg, director of CHART to discuss the format of the competition and its role within the production of architecture, both physically and conceptually.

The London Festival of Architecture is one of the world’s largest annual architecture festivals which relies on the collaboration with architecture and design practices, leading cultural and academic institutions, artists and many others to celebrate London as a global hub of architectural experimentation, practice and debate. Over the years LFA Competitions have helped deliver some of the most interesting public interventions such as the Dulwich Picture Gallery Pavilions, City Benches, St Paul’s Gateway amongst others. Whilst numerous other festivals decided to cancel or postpone their program LFA has taken on the challenge and has for the first time inaugurated an online festival - LFA Digital which this year will examine power from multiple perspectives. My name is Federica Zambeletti, founder of KooZA/rch, and today I will be in conversation with LFA’s head of programme Rosa Rogina and James and Carolina of the Tottenham Pavilion to discuss the typology of the pavilion and the implications of the digitalisation of the programme.

Welcome to our second week of the Digital Tottenham Pavilion Conversations: the urban intervention, my name is Federica Zambeletti, founder of the digital platform KooZA/rch and today I will be co-hosting this talk with Joe Wright of the Tottenham Pavilion team. Nowadays, we are experiencing a proliferation of urban interventions, from the design and architecture industry to activists and citizens. The advent of these installations within our urban context provide for an experimental medium which allows us to engage and challenge the city and its spaces. By breaking the fabric of the latter, these devices propose alternative lenses through which we can reconsider and redefine the way we approach and inhabit public space. We have the pleasure of discussing the topic with the architects Tomaso Boano & Jonas Prismontas and Claire Richards. Boano Prismontas is a London based architecture studio who has extensively articulated a series of temporary projects within public spaces both in the UK and abroad. Claire is the founder and director of Footwork Architects, a non-profit organisation, working to help create thriving communities and ensure clear social principles underpin development within the built environment. Claire is also patron of the London Festival of Architecture and a judge for Tottenham Pavilion. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today

Harringay Warehouse District, also known locally as Manor House Warehouses is a former industrial site in South Tottenham that has, over the past 20 years, been converted into live and workspace by artists, makers, musicians and entrepreneurs. Much has changed from the area’s humble beginnings of underground parties to much publicised markets that take place in the area today. My name is federica Zambeletti, founder of KooZA/rch, and In this podcast Carolina and James from Tottenham Pavilion, are joined by two current warehouse tenants who have been involved with projects in the area; Jenna Jardine, artist, maker and spatial designer who has collaborated on numerous warehouse installations from Floating Jellyfish to Pallet Paradise and Nina Alonso, a Tottenham Pavilion applicant, who also runs projects promoting synergies between different collectives.

Harringay Warehouse District, also known locally as Manor House Warehouses is a former industrial site in South Tottenham that has, over the past 20 years, been converted into live and workspace by artists, makers, musicians and entrepreneurs. Many of the earlier tenants began with blank slates, repurposing empty warehouses into their own homes and workplaces. In 2015, a legal challenge was made against the area by Haringey Council for unauthorised residential use. The council lost the case and actually ended up producing a Local Plan for Warehouse Living, giving the district a more formal recognition. Much has changed from the area’s humble beginnings of underground parties to much publicised markets that take place in the area today. 

In Architecture whatever we create for private use becomes a structure in public space. Therefore Architecture is  both an instrument of awareness and of the political capacity of a community”. (Paolo Baratta, Introduction to “FreeSpace”, Venice Biennale, 2018)

How can we define what is a public space when today nearly all buildings and lands are privately owned? When we design spaces for the city, we as designers not only need to understand the given situation but also imagine an alternative future evolution. In doing so, the collaboration between the architect and the various users is essential. Public space today needs to answer to the rich pluralism of our society, to be built with and not only for the community. Often public space is intended as the void between buildings, yet it is the opposite. It is the urban space that dictates the boundaries of the buildings we inhabit. The connection of spaces and people, the junction between multiple lives and stories. 

The questions we want to tackle today are aiming to explore the difficult yet exciting route to intertwine (even more) the community and the design. How can we design a space which is safe and free, coherent but yet multi-diverse, how can we shape the urban space without the ubris to control it? Today we will be in conversation with Joe from the Tottenham Pavilion team and Simon a community development specialist from the Manor House Development trust.

Welcome to the first episode of the Tottenham Pavilion Conversations, a project developed as a collaboration between the digital architecture platform KooZA/rch and the Tottenham Pavilion team in occasion of the London Festival of Architecture 2020. My name is Federica Zambeletti and today along with Carolina Gismondi from KooZA/rch, we will be in conversation with Carolina, James and Joe from the Tottenham Pavilion project. In early 2020, a competition was launched to develop a concept for a pavilion that encapsulates the uniqueness of warehouse life for a wider public audience. Tottenham Pavilion is a project run by a local team from the Harringay Warehouse District; a former industrial site in South Tottenham that has, over the past 20 years, been converted into live and work space by artists, makers, musicians and entrepreneurs. The community is a living alternative to standard gentrification. Shaped by a self-build community, rather than delivered by a regeneration masterplan. It’s not merely grass root, nor bottom up, that’s far too linear - it’s a power source that comes from the clash of differences that makes this community unique. And now lets find out more….