Monthly Archives: November 2025
Open City Accelerate 2026
Alison Brooks Architects is proud to continue supporting Accelerate – Open City’s free, pioneering architecture mentoring programme for 16-18 year olds from underrepresented backgrounds in London.
Alison Brooks Architects is proud to continue supporting Accelerate – Open City’s free, pioneering architecture mentoring programme for 16-18 year olds from underrepresented backgrounds in London.
At the kick-off workshop, we heard from Anis, an inspiring alumnus now pursuing his career path as a Part I Architectural Assistant. He shared how the programme equipped him with the skills, portfolio, network and confidence to pursue his career in architecture.
Our Accelerate mentors Dan and Corina will lead studio-based mentoring sessions in early 2026 – where students will undertake key skills such as model-making, live sketching and plan and section drawing – effectively giving them a real-world taste of what life in practice looks like. The program culminates in a joint public exhibition of students’ work.
We fully support Accelerate’s mission in providing young people from under-represented backgrounds with opportunities to explore built environment professions, developing skills and knowledge to make informed, supported career choices.
↳ Photos of students from Open City’s Accelerate programme.
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Keynote ‘An Architecture of Nature’ at Institute for Barcelona’s Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC)
5.11.2025, Barcelona, Spain
Alison Brooks delivered a keynote lecture exploring how architecture can serve as a bridge between cultural memory and a brighter, more sustainable future.
Alison Brooks delivered a keynote lecture exploring how architecture can serve as a bridge between cultural memory and a brighter, more sustainable future.
Titled ‘An Architecture of Nature,’ the lecture brought together the themes of social inclusivity, sculptural design language and sustainable material innovation before an engaged audience at the IAAC’s Barcelona Sant Martí campus.
The event served as the curtain-raiser to the Barcelona International Architecture Film Festival (BARQ), coinciding with the world premiere of ‘Forested Future’ – a compelling 90-minute documentary by filmmaker Petr Krejčí and the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), with support from Labóh. The film traces Brooks’ evolving philosophy on timber, which she views as more than merely a building material, but as a profound medium with a spiritual connection.
This perspective has been shaped by Brooks’ unique dual Canadian-European education and her deepening engagement with North American indigenous worldviews that understand context as simultaneously physical, cultural and spiritual. As the IAAC noted, “Throughout her lecture, Brooks reflected on how buildings can embody both individual and collective narratives, using form and materiality to express identity and belonging.”
Her projects – from the Cohen Quadrangle Exeter College at Oxford University to the Cadence courtyard-towers at London’s King’s Cross, and The Smile, centrepiece of the London Design Festival – demonstrate what IAAC described as “an architecture that is both poetic and pragmatic, deeply rooted in place while open to experimentation.” Brooks’ work continues to offer a source of optimism, showing how timber’s environmental benefits and structural capabilities can be elevated to create an architecture that reconnects urban dwellers with the natural world.
The institute summarised the evening’s significance: “By engaging with themes of material innovation, environmental responsibility and architectural expression, Alison Brooks offered IAAC’s students and guests a vision of design that connects human experience with the broader ecologies that sustain it – an architecture not only of nature, but for nature.”
↳ Read more on Alison’s IAAC lecture here.
Photos courtesy of the IAAC
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Cadence in King’s Cross has won the SFE Project of the Year award in the New Build (UK) category.
The judges praised it as “a very well executed project,” particularly impressed by the bent aluminium window profiles set within precast arches.
The judges praised it as “a very well executed project,” particularly impressed by the bent aluminium window profiles set within precast arches.
The cladding features brick-faced precast concrete panels with punched windows, forming striking double-height arches in front of stick curtain walling at ground level along Canal Reach, as well as throughout the podium’s internal courtyard and crowning top floors.
This landmark mixed-use building brings a quietly flamboyant presence to the head of Lewis Cubitt Park, claiming pride of place within the King’s Cross Central Masterplan. With its idiosyncratic arched language, this ‘courtyard tower’ is not just one of the most memorable buildings but a demonstration project for offsite manufacturing techniques.
We extend our gratitude to the awarding body the Society of Façade Engineering (SFE), our client Related Argent and collaborators FMDC Ltd and Laing O’Rourke. Looking forward to celebrating more successes together.
Images by Matt Williams (FMDC)
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Alison Brooks on Timber: Interview in Catalonia’s Leading Newspaper
Alison Brooks’ latest interview by Antoni Ribas Tur in Ara, the most widely read newspaper written exclusively in the Catalan language, is now available online under the title “Exposed wood helps people feel better / La fusta vista ajuda la gent a sentir-se millor.”
Alison Brooks’ latest interview by Antoni Ribas Tur in Ara, the most widely read newspaper written exclusively in the Catalan language, is now available online under the title “Exposed wood helps people feel better / La fusta vista ajuda la gent a sentir-se millor.”
The interview coincides with Brooks’ appearance in Forested Future, a documentary directed by Petr Krejčí and produced by The American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) with Alison Brooks Architects, which recently featured at BARQ Festival, an international architecture film festival held in Barcelona, Spain. During the conversation, she shared her perspective on some of the pressing issues of our time. She also delves into the political challenges and innovation opportunities of timber construction, alongside the spiritual connection that the material elicits.
“Wood is one of the ways architecture gets closest to nature,” Brooks observes. She believes that working with wood, because of all its intrinsic qualities, brings a natural and emotional connection. “The way wood expresses growth and the passage of time through its grain connects us with something larger than ourselves: nature, the unmade world,” she adds.
Brooks also addressed the need to overcome the fire-risk stigma associated with mass timber. She referenced The Smile, the first project constructed using large-scale hardwood cross-laminated timber (CLT), as a demonstration of the economic viability and environmental sustainability of timber as a building material. She acknowledged that current trade restrictions also impede the broader adoption of timber construction.
However, as Antoni notes, Brooks sees a silver lining in these challenges. “Crises like this renew attention to local forests, ecosystems and cultures – and how we can make them more sustainable and productive,” she explains. “Working with wood is a way of life. It sustains communities – from forest managers to carpenters – and in the case of Indigenous peoples of North America, it reflects thousands of years of symbiosis with forests.”
↳ Read the full interview here.
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London Premiere of ‘Forested Future’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
3.11.2025, London, UK
Last night was a celebration of hope: that in an increasingly urbanised world of eight billion people, there remains a future that is forested.
Last night was a celebration of hope: that in an increasingly urbanised world of eight billion people, there remains a future that is forested.
The London premiere of ‘Forested Future’ took place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, where the 90-minute documentary by award-winning Czech filmmaker Petr Krejčí and American Hardwood Export Council, traces the power and provenance of eastern forest hardwoods, through the architectural practice of Alison Brooks, exploring the stories that link us to these ancient forests and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods – from foresters, artisans and ecologists to the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.
Brooks’s journey began with her mother’s love of the Arts and Crafts movement, which first sparked her interest in architecture. In the film, she traces the origins of the cherrywood used in her projects back to its source, elevating timber from mere building material to a medium for emotional and spiritual connection.
As the documentary observes: “Our connection with nature is fading. In the face of climate change, biodiversity threats and environmental decline, sources of optimism are increasingly precious.” In the spirit of optimism, the evening crescendoed with an electrifying performance by Van Wagner – forester, educator and musician also featured in the film – who had the entire venue stomping and singing along in unison.
The film continues its journey at the Barcelona International Architecture Film Festival (BARQ), with its premiere at Cinemes Girona on 6 November at 6pm, following its screening at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in Prague at the end of October.
↳ Learn more about the film here.
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