Who Holds The Power To Shape Our Cities?

Afterparti - Cities are unequal, and power struggles often play out in the arena of the built environment, say the London-based collective of young architecture writers. We asked them to take over the following pages to reflect on how we can make contemporary urban spaces more inclusive

- Afterparti

From Failure to Power

Afterparti is a collective of nine London-based writers founded in March 2019 to champion radical, underrepresented voices within the culture and criticism of architecture. We explore big ideas about contemporary urban space through the lenses of identity and race.

Afterparti curates live events on themes like failure and power. These events are then followed by a zine, also called Afterparti, which acts as a platform to further develop the conversation and also as a space to document our thoughts and experiences. The on-stage discussions at our events become catalysts for the content of the zine and point us towards potential contributors whom we invite to expand upon them in a personal, playful or even provocative manner.

Our zine is only available in print, as, since we are all swimming in PDFs, we think it’s important to switch off from the screen and have something that you can hold. Something that takes up physical space on your shelf. We hope that through our live events and our zine launch parties, we can build a closer relationship with our audience. We love that much of our audience is just like us: diverse, passionate and energetic. But our zines and events are for everyone. We aspire for them to be as relevant to architects and designers as they are to wider society, because we all have a stake in the built environment.