How do we get to know a place? How do we observe its singularities and how can we record them? 

The Fellowship

During the summer of 2017 Alpa Depani travelled to New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong as part of a Winston Churchill Fellowship in the design category awarded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (WCMT) and the British Council for her self-initiated project ‘Bottom up approaches to small scale public realm in dense global cities’; a comparative study of community driven space in New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, learning lessons for London. Spending 10-12 days in each city, Alpa walked and looked, recording her observations using the same methods each day to capture and create a narrative.

The Exhibition

Recordings, an exhibition hosted by the Cass, London Metropolitan University, presents the outcomes of Alpa's Fellowship and showcases her process of urban exploration, presenting the maps, sketches, writing and sounds she produced and recorded. The quick, but incisive, recordings are both representation and analysis, they build a narrative of each city’s cultural and physical relationships with its public realm. 

As part of a short introduction to the exhibition, Julia Weston, Chief Executive of WCMT and João Guarantani, ADF's Senior Programme Manager, will talk briefly about the Fellowship programme and the type of global research it enables.

Launch Event

Thursday 1 March 2018, 18:30 - 21:00

The Cass, London Metropolitan University,

The Atrium at Calcutta House, Goulston Street, London E1 7QA

A small publication collating drawings, photographs and writing from the cities as well as findings and recommendations will be available for purchase on the night.

The exhibition and launch event are supported by the British Council to enable Alpa to share the ideas that sparked her Fellowship and its outcomes.

The event is free but registration is required. To find out more and register your attendance, click here.

About Alpa Depani

Alpa Depani is an architect and artist interested in a built environment that serves communities. She currently teaches on the BA Architecture courses at The Cass and Brighton University and maintains independent creative practice, some of which is published on her blog superbazaar and ‘zine ROMP, which is distributed for free.