MAIN STAGE PROGRAMME

WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER
Welcome to WAF 2018
10:00 Paul Finch, Programme Director, World Architecture
Festival
10:20 – 11:00 Session to be announced
Talk
11:10 – 11:50 Reinier de Graaf, Partner, Office for Metropolitan
Architecture
Session details to be announced
12:00 – 12:40 INSIDE keynote
Eva Jiřičná, Partner, AI – DESIGN
Session details to be announced
Lunch time lecture
13:00 – 13:40 Nutters of the North
Peter Cook, Architect, Professor and Writer

Invention and creativity inspired by the backdrop of the

North Sea. This session will look at UK, Netherlands,
Nordic, Baltic and Belgium architecture from the
nineteenth century up to today.
14:20 – 15:00 Talk
Jeanne Gang, Founding Principal, Studio Gang
Session details to be announced
Talk
15:10 – 15:50 Queering Constructs
Aaron Betsky, Dean, Frank Lloyd Wright School of
Architecture
Architecture not only contains us, it also frames us. How
can architecture extend our identities in new ways, while
sheltering who and what we are, could liberate us from
the boxes in which we find ourselves and imprisoned,
while an architecture of re-use and re-imagination can
ground our self- and social constructions in familiar forms.
16:00 – 16:40 INSIDE keynote
Christina Seilern, Principal, Studio Seilern
Session details to be announced
16:50 – 17:30 Talk
John Wardle, Principal, John Wardle Architecture
Session details to be announced
Talk
18:15 – 19:15 Identity: Towards A Reflexive Regionalist Practice of
Architecture
Li Xiadong, Professor, School of Architecture

I have no intention here to promote the ‘form’ as a

blueprint. It, at most, opens up possibilities. This is why
that I dare not to use the word “contemporary Chinese
architecture” to describe my practice, but “reflexive
regionalist architecture”. Here, to be “reflexive” as in
‘dialogue with’ a situation, through which, an objective
understanding of the situation could be established; to be
“regional” is here different from the ‘picturesque’ or,
‘iconic’ regionalist architecture (by which, architecture was
understood as a tool to demonstrate a cultural presence as
a fixed entity), what I have been proposing is to
understand the “regional” as comprehensive, dynamic and
sustainable ‘condition’ of place – a tabula rasa, that
solutions could be based on and emerged from.
19:15 – 19:25 Category winner announcements

THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER
10:15 – 10:20 Welcome
Talk
10:20 – 11:00 "It’s not about me – it’s about you "
Keith Priest, Partner, Fletcher Priest Architects
An insider’s guide to exploring identity. Drawing on the
worlds of design, business, movies and games, Keith
assesses identity’s impact on how we live, work and play.
And of course, the architectural ups and downs of riding this
tiger!

Talk
11:10 – 11:50 What Pliny Said
Prof Leslie Lokko, Head of Graduate School of Architecture,
University of Johannesburg
Just over two thousand years ago, Pliny the Elder uttered
the following: 'ex Africa semper aliquid novi.' (There is
always something new out of Africa). In this forty-minute
talk, Prof Lesley Lokko, Head of School at the newly-formed
Graduate School of Architecture, University of
Johannesburg, will talk about the work of a pioneering
group of African students whose three-year design research
project, Créoles, has produced imaginative and innovative
 ways to explore the difficult theme of cultural identity in
architecture. Drawing on their visits to the island nations of
Zanzibar, Cabo Verde and Réunion, their design projects for
way-stations, embassies and ministries all point to a much-
anticipated emerging African confidence in architectural
education and practice.
12:00 – 12:40 INSIDE keynote talk

India Mahdavi, Principal, india mahdavi

Session details to be announced;

13:00 – 13:40 Lunch time lecture

Engineering Identity

James O’Callaghan, Senior Director, Eckersley O'Callaghan

Engineers
Brian Eckersley, Co-Founding Director, Eckersley
O’Callaghan Engineers
Talk
14:20 – 15:00 Inversion and Subtraction in Urban Design
Kees Christiaanse, Founder, KCAP Architects & Planners

A method to preserve and revive local identities and

characteristics with the help of the resilience of site
constraints. These constraints work as braking factors
against generic urbanization.

15:10 – 15:40 INSIDE keynote

Maria Warner Wong, Design Director and co-founder, Maria
Warner Wong Design

16:00 – 16:40 Talk

Francine Houben, Founding Partner and Creative Director,
Mecanoo
Session details to be announced
Talk
16:50 – 17:30
Misak Terzibasiyan, Founder and Owner, Uarchitects
Identity is very relevant in a globalising society, where local
identity is often a common reaction to globalisation.
Examples include Brexit, and various forms of trade
protectionism, which stand in opposition to the logic of a
global society. These are not new trends but are intensified
by new technologies. My proposition looks are how we can
explain the influence of context, architecture and identity,
in both local and global settings.
 Talk
18:15 – 19:15 David Adjay, Principal, Adjaye Associates

19:15 – 19:25 Category winner announcements

FRIDAY 30 NOVEMBER
Lunch time lecture
13:00 –13:40 Razia Iqbal, Journalist and Arts Correspondent, BBC

17:40 – 18:40 Talk

Charles Jenks, Architecture Critic and Theorist

Rem Koolhaas, Founder, OMA

Session details to be announced