Celebration Week Keynote: William Mann

William Mann – Witherford Watson Mann Architects Chaired by Metropolitan Architecture Student Society (MASS)

Hosted by MASS & CUBE, William Mann will deliver the keynote lecture for Celebration Week 2026

Building upon this Semester’s series of MASS talks titled ‘Left on the drawing board’, William Mann will be talking about the unbuilt work of Witherford Watson Mann Architects.

‘Left on the drawing board’ explores ideas which architects often research and develop for work that never gets built. Although fascinating, this work is often less published or celebrated. This talk will focus on these, uncovering the design techniques and methodologies of the unbuilt, testing their relationship with the built.

This event is part of London Met Architecture’s Celebration Week 2026, themed Shared Ground. Join us in celebrating the work in progress of our BA Architecture and MArch Architecture students – a mid-year exhibition and programme of events which fosters open critique, shared learning, and a collective studio culture exhibited through the collective work in progress from the year so far

Shared Ground will take up the Atrium space at our Aldgate Campus on the 4th and 5th of March and is open to all.

Speakers:

William Mann studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and Harvard, graduating in 1991. After working on archaeological sites in Rome and Egypt, he gained professional experience in London and Flanders, including at Tim Ronalds Architects. At Robbrecht en Daem Architecten, Ghent, he was joint project architect for the new concert hall and opera house in Bruges. Since establishing Witherford Watson Mann Architects, he has worked as project director on a range of public projects, including the Whitechapel Gallery, Upper Lea Valley Landscape Strategy, Gistel social housing and Walthamstow Wetlands. William has written on London’s edge landscapes, social engineering, self-build, buildings’ nicknames, and the hybrid urbanism of Flanders for Archis, Oase and other magazines, as well as contributing chapters to several books on the relation between urban regeneration and social change. He was a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, in 2014.

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