About this event
With activity responding to this year’s London Festival of Architecture theme Reimagine, LFA RIBA Late returns for 2024 with a full schedule of live performances, installations, talks and tours across multiple floors of the historic 66 Portland Place.
Join us for this late opening to celebrate our latest exhibition, Raise the Roof: Building for Change. You’ll also be able to learn about our Royal Gold Medallist Lesley Lokko's inspiring career in a dedicated display; enjoy a series of documentary film screenings in the Jarvis Hall; explore the features of the building at the heart of the conversation in a self-guided, self-paced building tour; and 'raise your voice' at one of our debate boards located around the building.
Get ready to explore all of this whilst a curated soundscape brings the building to life with music from across the globe.
Exhibitions and Displays
Raise the Roof: Building for Change - The Architecture Gallery
Our latest exhibition explores the narratives and attitudes embedded within the fabric of RIBA’s 66 Portland Place; unpacking themes such as gender, race, and imperialism through a series of new and exciting creative works. You’re invited to help uncover the building’s complicated history and share your hopes for the future of architecture and the profession.
Royal Gold Medal 2024: Lesley Lokko Display - Practice Space
RIBA Royal Gold Medallist 2024 Professor Lesley Lokko has reimagined the role of the architect through her position as an educator, author, and curator.
Visit the display in the Second Floor Practice Space to learn of Lokko’s groundbreaking contributions to architectural education, dialogue, and discourse from a ‘Global South’ perspective – relentlessly pursuing inclusivity and equity in the field.
Raise Your Voice Debate Boards - throughout 66 Portland Place
Be part of the conversation by sharing your views and ideas on of the debate boards around the building. Write a note or draw a picture in response to the different features and activities happening around you.
Talks and Tours
Raise the Roof: Building for Change curator tour - The Architecture Gallery, 7pm, 8pm
Join exhibition curator Margaret Cubbage for an in-depth exploration of Raise the Roof: Building for Change.
Artist spotlight talks - The Architecture Gallery
Join our artists as they each share unique insights into the works created for the exhibition.
- Esi Eshun - 7.30pm
- Arinjoy Sen - 8.30pm
Self-guided building tour
Explore 66 Portland Place at your own pace with a self-led trail that visits the spaces and features addressed in our exhibition.
Workshops and activities
Soap carving - Clore Learning Centre, 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Join the RIBA Learning team and Buildings Craft College to have a go at carving using the versatile medium of soap, inspired by the intricate carvings throughout 66 Portland Place.
Film screening: The Couple in the Cage by Coco Fusco and Paula Heredia - Jarvis Hall, 6.45pm, 8.15pm
This short documentary follows the travelling performance art of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, The Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West. Their work is a powerful satirical comment on the morality of treating human beings as exotic curiosities.
Film screening: Uppland by Edward Lawrenson and Killian O’Dochartaigh - Jarvis Hall, 7.30pm, 9pm
Winner of the Society of Architectural Historians Award for Film and Video, 2021
An architect and filmmaker from Europe visit Yekepa, a town in the remote highlands of Liberia, once a thriving mining community, now decaying and desolate: a concrete ruin in the West African bush.
Poetry Vs Colonialism - First Floor Gallery, 6.30pm to 9.30pm
Poets from Poetry Vs Colonialism Laila Sumpton and Keith Jarrett will lead drop-in workshops that will help to unravel the histories of empire that RIBA holds. They will perform their poetry throughout the evening on the themes of sugar, cotton and tea as well as the new work generated by the workshop.
Poetry Vs Colonialism is an arts and education organisation who unravel the complex histories of the British Empire through poetry asking how we can better understand them through our senses and emotions. We work with poets, artists, schools, universities, museums and cultural organisations to investigate colonialism using items traded such as sugar, cotton, tobacco and gold as a starting point.
Instagram @poetryvscolonialism
Twitter: @PoetryVsC
Reading room - First Floor Gallery, 6.30pm to 9.30pm
Sit down and dive deeper into the themes of the evening with a selection of books from our RIBA Library and beyond.
More
Curated Soundscape - Florence Hall
Hear the building come to life with sounds from around the globe.
Food and drink - Florence Hall
A selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks as well as small bites will be available to purchase throughout the night.
With more to be announced.
This event is supported by Champagne Taittinger
