Celebrating the city

The London Festival of Architecture starts this weekend and although there are far too many events and installations to mention individually, here are a few that have caught the Design Week team’s eye.

Each weekend of the festival will be dedicated to a different part of London, including central, east and south. The focus of the first weekend is the central London stretch between Regent’s Park and St James’s Park, nicknamed Nash Ramblas because of the Regency terraces in the area designed by John Nash. In collaboration with the Royal Institute of British Architects, Applied Information Group has created an iPhone app for the festival, which allows users to explore the area’s architectural history through interactive maps and archive photography.

A number of guided cycle tours, or Sky Rides, will take place throughout the festival, including a tour of remodelled housing estates with Wayne Hemmingway.

Witherford Watson Mann director Stephen Witherford will take a guided tour of the architect’s vision for the Bankside Urban Forest. The Urban Forest is a long-term public realm strategy to extend Bankside’s successful cultural and business area Bankside down to Elephant and Castle.

The Wayward Plant Registry and Bankside Open Spaces Trust have taken the Urban Forest concept quite literally, transforming Union Street in SE1 in an urban orchard and garden for the duration of the festival. There will be a plant adoption and exchange programme and number of workshops about biodiversity and urban food growing.

The London Festival of Architecture runs from 19 June – 4 July.