Welcome to Mae

We recently hosted our Build-A-Town workshop as part of the 2023 London Festival of Architecture. The LFA theme this year is ‘In Common’ and our workshop brought together twenty local primary school children to build their very own town.

Held at the wonderful North Woolwich Library in Newham during the half-term holidays, the children and their families master planned their perfect town and crafted buildings they would love to see and visit, including a museum, a castle, a campsite and houses.

We delivered the workshop with support from London Borough of Newham and Lendlease as part of our 2023-24 learning, skills and employment programme within Newham.

The Observer's architecture critic Rowan Moore has included our John Morden Centre on his recommended list for this year's prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize. He describes the Centre as 'an exemplary work' that has 'an intimate and informal composition, distinctly Scandinavian in spirit, lifted by moments of amplitude – a high, luminous dining space; a broad passageway winding through it; generous connections to the outside. It’s casual, you might say, except that the carefulness of the architecture is anything but.' The official shortlist will be announced in September.

We are pleased to be co-hosting, alongside Lendlease and the London Borough of Newham, a family event for this year’s London Festival of Architecture. Our Build-A-Town workshop will be held at North Woolwich Library for 20 primary school aged students and their parents. We will spend an afternoon exploring architecture and master planning by building our own town. The 2023 LFA theme is ‘In Common’ and our workshop will bring families together, sharing experiences and cultures through play and learning.

We have been fortunate to work with Be First on several projects, most recently the affordable housing development Padnall Lake. As part of our social value programme, benefiting the local Barking and Dagenham community, we had the opportunity to establish a new series of workshops for the alumni students from the Open City Accelerate programme.

Accelerate is a design, education and mentoring programme providing young people aged 16-18 with architectural experience before going to university. Our alumni workshops, which we hope will be an annual event, offered advice to these same young people who are starting to plan their post-university careers. Our team of directors, associates and architects worked with 12 students, reviewing their portfolios, CVs and application letters, and providing mock interviews.

Through group work and 1-2-1 mentoring we were able to offer knowledge of the industry and contacts, and the afternoon sessions also gave students from different universities the chance to share experiences. We were very impressed with the students and look forward to hearing about their education and careers in the future.