Back to school with NMB

September 2024

Back from our summer holidays, well rested and looking forward - it’s always a really exciting time of year for us, this year no different: new projects starting and others reaching important milestones.

I’ve returned from a very special conference in South Africa with new ideas and collaborators, our Weymouth College project has now completed the technical design phase and will be moving onto site in the coming months and our children’s nursery refurbishment and extension was granted planning approval at committee. A few highlights:

Short film: Ongoing & Emerging Discourses on African Architectural Practices

Ongoing & Emerging discourses on African Contemporary Architecture

What springs to mind when you think of conferences?

Held in a rural retreat in South Africa’s Bushbuckridge region of Limpopo: quiet, amongst nature (sometimes a little too close - monkeys stealing our snacks) game drives in Kruger National Park before breakfast...

Participants from 35 countries - from across Africa, Europe and the US. Sixty varied, deeply researched and diverse presentations, all under the umbrella of architecture on the African continent.

Image credit: Still from short film by Nyaaz Aysen. Campus Innovation Lab, School of Architecture & Planning, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Fountain House Fenchurch Street

See the latest images of our cultural activation project for the EC Bid. A 100m long graphic artwork to enrich, inspire and activate. Working with local cultural partners we produced a graphic artwork showcasing: sculpture in the city, ‘Old Tom’s Tale’ (an artwork commissioned by EC BID to celebrate the nearby Leadenhall Market by Patrick McEvoy), NLA work on The City of London, local area history as well as sign-posting to interesting local spaces such as the Gilt of Cain (a nearby monument to the abolition of the slave trade). The piece runs from Callum Street, along Fenchurch Street, and up to Fen Court and covers 85 shop windows and was designed in collaboration with Studio ND.

Partners: EC BID, Sculpture in the City, NLA, Artist Patrick McEvoy & Aviva Investors

Photographs: Mickey Lee

Weymouth College Gallery….

We gathered at Weymouth College in the sunshine for the official launch of the new community gallery, a community build project - made primarily from recycled materials.

We marked out the building outline in paint and and used repurposed placards (from a previous exhibition) to suggest where future work will hang.

We were joined by the brilliant artist Jodie House, collaborating with us to help shape the gallery. Jodie's not-for-profit Houseworks CIC have been developing work with under-represented young people in the area to create pieces responding to the shapes, shadows and silhouettes of Weymouth. Houseworks also ran a workshop on Monday to create a giant version along the same lines - what better way to get people involved and to spark interesting and informative conversations?

Talk at The Africa Centre

In July last year we hosted a talk at The Africa Centre in Southwark. The talk was a conversation between Teesa Bahana, Director of 32° East, and James, exploring the 32º East Arts Centre - the city’s first purpose-built community arts space. It’s impact on the artist community and the wider purpose and ambitions of the project.

Thank you to everyone who attended - it was a great evening with a really engaged audience. We could have kept chatting all night!

You can listen to the talk here.