Event Schedule 2024

Welcome to the W Programme

Our community of W Partners have told us over the years how much they value simple networking events as an opportunity to connect with old contacts, and to make new ones. So, we listened and kicked off the 2024 Programme with a few hours of informal conversation over a few refreshments.

Venue: ING Media, 21 Curtain Road London, EC2A 3LT 

17:30 – 18:00 -  Welcome drink

18:00 – 18:10 - Welcome speech from Manon Mollard, editor of The Architectural Review and Emily Booth, editor of the Architects' Journal

18:10 – 18:15 - Welcome from ING Media

18:15 – 19:30 - Refreshments and networking

View more photos here

Spring Lecture and networking
content/networking

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Spring Lecture 

Re-watch the lecture here (Only W Partners are able to watch this with the password provided)

Lecture title: Breathing spaces

Iwona Buczkowska has spent a lifetime researching and inventing spaces where we feel ‘elsewhere’. Ahead of her time, she has dedicated her practice to ecological urbanism since the 1980s.

In this lecture, the Polish-French architect and winner of the 2024 Jane Drew Prize will talk about the importance of designing fluid and friendly spaces that are bathed in light, offering multiple views and providing access to the outdoors. Rejecting standardisation and orthogonality, her architecture follows oblique planes and clings to supporting arches. From social housing to educational buildings to urban planning, Buczkowska always places the user at the centre of her design process to create living environments that are the source of simple pleasures.

Venue: AtkinsRéalis, Nova North, 11 Bressenden Place, London SW1E 5BY

Spring Speed Mentoring

Venue: Piercy&Co, Centro Building, 39 Plender Street, NW1 0DT

18:00 – 18:15 Guest arrival

18:15 – 18:20 Welcome from Emily Booth, Editor, Architects' Journal

18:20 – 18:50 Guest speaker from Piercy&Co

18:50 – 20:10 Mentoring

20:10 – 21:30 Networking and close

A collaboration between W Partner practices, with each practice, with mentors and mentees being matched up – at random - for an evening of learning and career development. Our speed mentoring sessions are open to 2 mentees and 1 mentor from each practice. Students will also be invited to take part when appropriate. On average, each mentor will have 4 x 15-minute mentoring sessions. Each mentee will have 2 x 15-minute mentoring sessions. This gives everyone the opportunity to talk to multiple people. Where possible, and in the interests of the W Programme’s core aim to supporting underrepresented people in architecture, we encourage all mentees that are put forward to be female or non-binary. 

Summer Networking Event

Venue: Perkins&Will, 150 Holborn, London EC1N 2NS

Our annual Summer Networking Event is an opportunity for W Partners, Sponsors and Supporters to come together informally and connect with peers and other industry voices over some refreshments.

17:30 – 18:00  Welcome drinks

18:00 – 18:10  Welcome from Manon Mollard, editor at The Architectural Review and Ellie Sharpe, Business Development                           and Marketing Director at Perkins&Will

18:10 – 18:40  Presentation and Q&A with the W Awards MJ Long Prize winner, Jennifer Frewen, associate director at Takero                          Shimazaki Architects (t-sa). 

Jennifer Frewen, associate director at Takero Shimazaki Architects (t-sa), won this year’s MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice for her work on the new global headquarters of the Royal Academy of Dance in London. Working within an existing envelope, the architect led a team reimagining the building’s footprint as a continuation of the surrounding city. Studios and learning spaces are connected by a network of indoor ‘streets’ and ‘urban plazas’ while large internal windows provide views into studios, ensuring that dance animates the whole building. 

Frewen, an associate director at t-sa since 2021, originally joined the practice in 2008 as an architectural assistant, having previously moved from Ireland where she studied architecture at the Dublin Institute of Technology. Her previous projects include the 2015 Leicester Print Workshop and the 2022 Curzon Camden Cinema, both RIBA Award winners.

18:30 – 21:00  Drinks, canapés and networking

Online Speed Mentoring

An online edition of our renowned speed mentoring series, making it more accessible to those that don't or cant attend our in-person events.

A collaboration between W Partner practices, with each practice, with mentors and mentees being matched up – at random - for a morning of learning and career development. Our speed mentoring sessions are open to 2 mentees and 1 mentor from each practice. Students will also be invited to take part when appropriate. On average, each mentor will have 4 x 15-minute mentoring sessions. Each mentee will have 2 x 15-minute mentoring sessions. This gives everyone the opportunity to talk to multiple people. Where possible, and in the interests of the W Programme’s core aim to supporting underrepresented people in architecture, we encourage all mentees that are put forward to be female or non-binary. 

Autumn Lecture 

Venue: EPR Architects, All Saints, Austral Street, London SE11 4SJ

Speaker: Lola Olufemi

Title: Feminist Architectures of Possibility

In this lecture, Olufemi will explore the relational possibilities inherent to feminist architectural practice, thinking specifically about the role and function of the imagination in building structures capable of sustaining liveable life.

 

(Credit: Robin Christian)

Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective.

18:00 – 18:30: Welcome drinks

18:30 – 18:35: Introduction and welcome address by Manon Mollard, Editor, The Architectural Review

18:35 – 19:05: 30-minute Lecture by Lola Olufemi

19:05 – 19:40: Q&A, hosted by Manon Mollard

19:40 – 20:30: Drinks and networking

REGISTER HERE

NOTE: this event is open to a limited number of practices that are not W Partners on a first-come first-served basis. 

Winter Speed Mentoring

Venue: Henley Halebrown, 21, Perseverance Works, 38 Kingsland Rd, London E2 8DD

A collaboration between W Partner practices, with each practice, with mentors and mentees being matched up – at random - for a morning of learning and career development. Our speed mentoring sessions are open to 2 mentees and 1 mentor from each practice. Students will also be invited to take part when appropriate. On average, each mentor will have 4 x 15-minute mentoring sessions. Each mentee will have 2 x 15-minute mentoring sessions. This gives everyone the opportunity to talk to multiple people. Where possible, and in the interests of the W Programme’s core aim to supporting underrepresented people in architecture, we encourage all mentees that are put forward to be female or non-binary. 

W Partners: To nominate two mentees and one mentors from your organisation for this event, please liaise with our team here .

Please note, only W Partners can attend this event. 

Winter Lecture and Networking

Venue: Zaha Hadid Architects, 101 Goswell Road London EC1V 7EZ
Lecture: An unacknowledged presence: Women architects from South Asia with Sumita Singha
 

Join us for an inspiring evening with Sumita Singha, an architect, teacher, and writer with awards including UIA: UNESCO, Women In Business and Atkins Inspire awards. Sumita received an OBE for services to architecture in 2021.

In this lecture, Sumita will debate the reasons behind the lack of discourse about women architects from South Asia within the architecture practice and academe. Asia is the biggest continent in the world and within it, South Asia is the largest subregion with a population of over two million. Women architects can contribute not just to the built environment but also to wider societal and environmental issues such as the Climate crisis. Yet the work of South Asian women architects remains hidden. The reasons include residual patriarchal and colonial attitudes towards this region, which was part of the British empire until the late 1940’s. There is a lack of information about them online, and in libraries and archives globally. Highlighting the work of these women will not only enrich architecture but also pave the way for future generations of women architects from the Commonwealth and the rest of the world.

W Partners register here
Please note, if you aren't a W Partner and sign up to this event, you wont be allowed access.