Pavilions for Empowerment

Bringing Home to the Unknown was a temporary installation in Regent’s Park designed by architecture collective, POoR and students from Mayesbrook Park School, Becontree. Commissioned and created as part of the cultural programme to mark the centenary of the Becontree Estate. 

Over six weeks in 2021, POoR Collective worked with Year 10 students from Mayesbrook Park School, an alternative provision school for young people in Barking and Dagenham, London as part of the RIBA Architecture Ambassadors Programme.

The POoR Collective, which stands for Power Out Of Restriction, focuses on the development of communities through the elevation of young people. They believe in the power of community and aim to help those who are often under-represented, facilitating collaborative projects that enable creative and co-designed projects.

The People’s Pavilion demonstrated a bold approach to co-design. It was a collaborative project, initiated by Beyond The Box Consultants CIC and Urban Symbiotics, who collectively engaged 150 young East Londoners to design a space solely by the creation of young people. 

The multi-disciplinary project gave the opportunity for the young people to work in partnership with professionals from the built environment and creative arts industries to design and build a temporary pavilion, and produce a ten day festival. 

Running in parallel with the design competition was the young cultural producers programme. Working with a team of ten cultural producers from across East London, together the residents programmed a ten day festival that was hosted at The People’s Pavilion. 

The pavilion provided a dynamic programme, including a series of live performances and immersive DJ sets - among them a session with Space Black with projected archival images from the Black Cultural Archives.

Proud Little Pyramid brought camp, colour and creativity to the area of King’s Cross in London as part of a residency during the summer of 2021. The purpose of the structure was to bring greater visibility within urban spaces for the queer and the marginal.   

Artist and designer Adam Nathaniel Furman used the recycled structure of the giant King’s Cross Christmas tree, to create a monumental ‘anti-monument’. The shape and decoration embodies urban grandiosity and references the architectural history of King’s Cross, as well as its history of being a place of free expression, kinship and pleasure – from the Panarmonion Pleasure Gardens in the early 19th Century to its central place in the history of Queer London from the 80s until the early 2000s.