<\/p>\n
The Open House Festival returns 13\u201321 September with more than 700 buildings open across all 33 boroughs. For a second year the Architects\u2019 Journal curates an AJ Collection showcasing recent AJ Architecture Award winners and commended projects that highlight affordable housing, retrofit, landscape\u2011led density and sensitive conservation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
London\u2019s Open House Festival returns this September, offering a rare inside look at more than 700 buildings across all 33 boroughs between 13 and 21 September 2025. According to the festival organisers, the annual programme is expressly educational and community\u2011focussed, providing free public access to architecture that is usually closed to visitors. For a second year the Architects\u2019 Journal has curated an AJ Collection of recent AJ Architecture Award winners and commended projects, inviting the practices behind them to open doors for drop\u2011in visits and guided tours during the nine\u2011day event.<\/p>\n
Among the AJ Collection is Archio\u2019s 200 Becontree Avenue, a 2022 completion that the practice describes as a new villa typology within the historic Becontree Estate. Commissioned by Be First for Barking and Dagenham, the scheme delivers 19 affordable homes and a ground\u2011floor community space across two buildings, and is rooted in detailed research into the estate\u2019s neo\u2011Georgian character and garden\u2011city principles. The wider Becontree development, built between 1921 and 1935, remains notable for its scale: by completion it contained roughly 26,000 homes and has long been described as the largest public housing scheme in the world\u2014context that helps explain why sensitive density and material dialogue were central to Archio\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n
Dalston\u2019s Bradbury Works exemplifies another strand of the collection: retrofit and social value. The Y\/N Studio project refurbished a Victorian terrace and added two storeys, wrapping the upper levels in a lightweight polycarbonate and aluminium skin that transforms circulation decks into terraces. The scheme provides roughly 1,100m\u00b2 of flexible workspace \u2014 including around 30 studios and ten retail pods \u2014 intended to be operated by Hackney Co\u2011operative Developments, and was conceived to strengthen connections with the busy civic life of Gillett Square.<\/p>\n
Lion Green Road (previously Red Clover Gardens), by Mary Duggan Architects in collaboration with RUFFARCHITECTS, illustrates a landscape\u2011led route to higher density. Delivered for Croydon\u2019s former development vehicle and set within newly created parkland, the project arranges 157 homes across five sculpted pavilions, each composed to respond to the sloping topography and to maximise views and accessibility. The designers emphasise communal open spaces, retained trees and pinwheel apartment groupings that aim to dissolve conventional front\u2011and\u2011back hierarchies between building and landscape.<\/p>\n
The AJ selection also showcases conservation and inventive infill across the city. Purcell\u2019s Boston Manor House in Brentford has been sensitively repaired and reimagined as a community and creative hub, complete with restored interiors and exhibition galleries. HawkinsBrown\u2019s work at Central Foundation Boys\u2019 School has upgraded a tightly constrained inner\u2011city campus with new laboratories and an innovative subterranean sports hall while retaining and reusing existing buildings where possible. Smaller\u2011scale, entrepreneurial approaches are represented by Nelson Wright Architects\u2019 Leybourne Road pair of townhouses, and Grafton Architects\u2019 Parcels Building on Oxford Street demonstrates how a careful re\u2011envelope and interior refit can create modern mixed\u2011use workspaces and public event spaces out of a 1950s structure.<\/p>\n
The AJ Architecture Awards programme \u2014 now in its eighth year \u2014 remains the underpinning thread for the collection. According to Architects\u2019 Journal, the national awards celebrate design excellence across multiple categories; the 2025 shortlist announcements are slated for 18\u201322 August, with the awards ceremony scheduled for 27 November 2025 at the Royal Lancaster London. The awards process, the journal notes, involves site visits by the judging panel and a category structure intended to recognise everything from small projects under \u00a3500,000 to large housing schemes.<\/p>\n
Practical details for visitors follow the festival organiser\u2019s guidance: bookings are free but often require registration, and attendees are advised to consult the Open House programme for event\u2011specific access, booking instructions and accessibility information before they travel. The festival also outlines contributor guidance and volunteering opportunities for those who wish to get more directly involved.<\/p>\n
Taken together, the AJ Collection offers a compact reading of current priorities in London practice: the repair and reuse of existing buildings; inventive approaches to affordable housing within sensitive historic contexts; landscape\u2011led masterplanning; and projects that embed workspace and community provision into neighbourhoods. Those themes reflect both the festival\u2019s community remit and the Architects\u2019 Journal\u2019s recent award\u2011making, and they provide an accessible programme for anyone interested in how technical design decisions are shaping London\u2019s public and domestic spaces.<\/p>\n