The Art of Architecture: film screening and Q&A panel

Doors open 6pm; film screening from 6:30pm followed by Q&A and a drinks reception. The event will take place at the Wash Houses (WHG-01).

Chaired by Dr Claire Jamieson, with a welcome message from Prof. Matthew Barac, and a Q&A panel including Eric Parry and guests.

Hosted by CUBE research centre in collaboration with MASS student society, this exclusive screening invites profound questions about architecture.

"The Art of Architecture" is a 2025 film by Academy Award-winning director Jon Blair that brings together several leading thinkers, academics and commentators to explore philosophical questions surrounding architecture's role in society. It highlights the portfolio of Eric Parry Architects to consider architecture’s contribution to society and urban experience, and the reciprocity between education and practice.

This event follows a similar format to the premier at the BAFTA 195 Piccadilly, in July 2025, at which the screening was followed by a lively panel discussion. On that occasion, the speakers included Ingrid Schroder, Jon Blair, Peter Carl, Richard Sennett and Carolyn Steel in conversation with Eric Parry, addressing the full range of issues and questions raised by the film.

Our panel will focus in particular on the relationship between pedagogy and practice and the premise of architecture as a lifelong learning journey; as a vocation. Claire Jamieson will chair the discussion which will invite questions from Samson Adjei, Takero Shimazaki, Carolyn Steel and our student society MASS, all in in conversation with Eric Parry.

We are delighted to invite you to register for this event, which is co-hosted by MASS and CUBE in collaboration with industry partner Eric Parry Architects. The aim is to bring our students and academic staff, our research community and external partners, as well as the wider design and client community together in a very current celebratory event - one that reflects profoundly on the relationship between architectural practice and design pedagogy.

Speakers

Eric Parry

Eric Parry founded his practice in 1983 after studying architecture at Newcastle, the RCA, and the AA. Contributions to academia include 14 years as Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Cambridge, and lectureships at the Graduate School of Design (Harvard), and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. As an architect he is known for the intellectual rigour and sensitivity with which every project is approached and imbued and for recognising the importance of art and craft in the built environment.

Samson Adjei

Dr Samson Adjei is a recent graduate of the LondonMet PhD programme in Architecture. Supervised by Matthew Barac, Christian Frost and Nate Kolbe, his thesis asked ‘what would Peter Zumthor do’ if he were motivated to engage with Machine Learning in the age of AI? Examiner Peter Carl commented that ‘the reader is rewarded with rich, humane insights’ by the study, which provocatively and imaginatively proposed a reconciliation between the discourses of phenomenology and digital speculation through play.

Takero Shimazaki

Takero Shimazaki is a Japan-born architect and a director of London-based architecture practice t-sa. He is known for his sensitive approach to design, focusing on reusing existing buildings and creating spaces with raw, atmospheric materials and minimal intervention, values embodied by the Niwa House shortlisted for the StirlingPrize in 2025. Since 2016, he has led Unit 8 in the Architecture MA at LondonMet and he founded the independent t-sa forum for architectural education.

Carolyn Steel

Carolyn Steel is a leading thinker on food and cities. A London-based academic, her award-winning books include Hungry City: How Food Shapes our Lives, and Sitopia: How Food can Save the World (2020). They have established her concept of ‘sitopia’ worldwide and her 2009 TED-Global talk has received 1.5 million views.

MASS

The Metropolitan Architecture Student Society, run by the students of the School of Art, Architecture and Design, was established in 2017 and has produced a series of talks every year (such as Who Cares?, Now What,? and the Second Floor series) - including online activities during the pandemic – as well as numerous social events, a variety of trips, exhibitions in collaboration with Blueprint Magazine at Clerkenwell Design Week, and publications such as Conversations on Racism.

CUBE

The Centre for Urban and Built Ecologies, founded in 2020, brings together research-active staff from a variety of subject areas at the School of Art, Architecture and Design as well as schools with cognate disciplines at London Metropolitan University. Scholars and practitioners in our community share an interest in the environmental, social, and cultural transformation of places, and a concern to understand and uncover relationships between spatial contexts, social dynamics, and sustainable environment. From 2020-23, we collaborated with Eric Parry Architects to produce three years of online and in-person seminars that explored The Living Memory of Cities, all of which are available to view in our online archive.

Chair

Claire Jamieson

Dr Claire Jamieson is Course Leader for the Architecture MA (Part 2) at LondonMet. She is an academic with a focus on architectural history, theory and practice. She has a background in architecture, having studied the subject at the University of Cambridge and the Royal College of Art, before moving into research with a role coordinating RIBA think-tank 'Building Futures' between 2009 and 2012. Here she led a number of influential research projects including 'The Future for Architects?'.

Image caption: The Art of Architecture collage (courtesy of Eric Parry Architects, 2025)

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