The Open House Festival is an annual celebration of London’s architecture and neighbourhoods and the people and communities that make them. It runs from 13 to 21 September 2025, when more than 700 buildings will open their doors to the public, allowing them to look inside normally inaccessible gems.
This year the AJ approached architecture practices behind a special selection of AJ Architecture Award winners from the past five years to participate. Those taking part include Archio’s new type of suburban villa for the 1920s pioneering Becontree Estate in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
The scheme, which completed in 2022, is part of an ongoing plan to create more housing in the borough and sits in an estate that remains the largest public housing scheme in the world, with 26,000 homes.
Also among the AJ Collection of seven schemes offering drop-in visits and guided tours during the festival is [Y/N] Studio’s Bradbury Works in a vibrant and unique east London community-focused public space.
Providing affordable workspace for Hackney Co-operative Developments, the refurbishment project added two storeys and has wrapped the former Victorian building in a striking polycarbonate skin that blurs both the industrial and domestic scale.
Red Clover Gardens – now known as Lion Green Road – by Mary Duggan Architects and RUFFARCHITECTS for the now-defunct Brick By Brick in Croydon is also on the list of must-see buildings to visit.
Here, 157 homes are arranged across five strikingly faceted blocks within a landscaped park-like setting. Each pavilion block’s composition responds to the site’s sloping topography and is oriented to optimise views.
The AJ Architecture Awards have been running since 2017 and celebrate design excellence in UK architecture. This year’s AJ Architecture Awards take place on 27 November 2025 at the Royal Lancaster London. For more information, see here.
The shortlists for the 2025 AJ Architecture Awards will be announced over the course of next week [18 to 22 August].
The AJ’s Open House Festival picks
Photo: French + Tye
200 Becontree Avenue by Archio, Dagenham RM8
Archio’s 2022 Housing Project category winner and taker of our Editor’s Choice award the same year, is a new type of villa within the original Becontree estate and built as part of a major housebuilding programme for the Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Commissioned by the council’s in-house regeneration company Be First, the design is the product of deep research into the Neo-Georgian characteristics of the estate, and delivered 19 affordable homes, plus a community space, across two fine buildings on a landscaped corner.
Drop-in on Sunday 21 September. More information here
Photo: Chris Redgrave
Boston Manor House by Purcell, Brentford TW8
This Jacobean House was built for Lady Mary Reade in 1623 and was later owned by the Clitherow family from the 1670s until the 1920s. The deteriorating ‘at-risk’ building was transformed into a new community and creative business hub through a rigorous process of conservation and repair. Now open to the public, for free, six days a week, it has been reimagined as a visitor destination and features beautifully restored historic interiors, ornate plasterwork – all joined by two community exhibition galleries, meeting rooms and a modern café. It won the Heritage Project category award last year.
‘Costumed’ guided tours on Saturday 13 September. More information here
Photo: French + Tye
Bradbury Works by [Y/N] Studio, Dalston N16
Building on an earlier rework by Hawkins\Brown, this refurbishment and extension of a Victorian building as affordable workspaces was completed in 2022 and won a commendation in the 2023 AJ Architecture Awards. As part of the project, two floors were added along with a new polycarbonate skin wrapping the entire building transforming access decks into connecting terraces. The building offers affordable business premises operated by Hackney Cooperative Developments, a not-for-profit community interest company which also leads on the animation of the busy Gillett Square onto which the scheme faces.
Guided tours on Saturday 20 September. More information here
Photo: Jack Hobhouse
Central Foundation Boys’ School by Hawkins\Brown, Old Street EC2A
A winner in the School Project category last year, this 150-year-old school has built upon its existing inner-city campus to provide new, state-of-the-art facilities. Hawkins\Brown has helped the school unlock significant financial and logistical challenges to provide 13,000m2 of much-needed upgrades to this unique site. Existing buildings have been refurbished where possible, with new-build infills only considered where it was not possible to provide specialist learning spaces in existing structures. New facilities include science laboratories and an innovative subterranean sports hall, while the Tabernacle Chapel and Sunday School Annex has been transformed for performing arts and music.
Guided tours on Saturday 13 September. More information here
Photo: French + Tye
Leybourne Road by Nelson Wright Architects, Leytonstone E11
Winner in the Project under £500,000 category in the 2022 AJAAs, this pair of new build semi-detached townhouses sits on an old garage site next to Wanstead Flats and was interestingly both designed and developed by the practice. With an entrepreneurial approach of building two houses to finance one, the replicable project was described by the judges three years ago as a ‘refreshing take on a terraced family home that has wide appeal to the market’.
Guided tours on Saturday 13 September. More information here
Photo: Rob Parrish
Lion Green Road by Mary Duggan Architects and RUFFARCHITECTS, Coulsdon CR5
Set within newly created parkland, this project delivers 157 homes across five pavilions between five and seven storeys for Croydon Council’s former development vehicle Brick By Brick. Designed with accessibility, landscape and materiality in mind, the scheme has no back or front with all flats arranged in groups of six in a pinwheel formation on each floor. It was a winner in the Housing Project (£20 million and over) category in 2023.
Guided tours on Tuesday 16 September. More information here
Photo: Jack Hobhouse
The Parcels Building by Grafton Architects, Marylebone W1U
This 2023 Refurb Project category winner is a mixed-use building on Oxford Street commissioned by Duke Street Property. Grafton Architects led the renovation of the original 1950s building, both preserving and extending it, and reinventing its façade with a new Portland Whitbed limestone skin in a clean lined ‘Classic’ style. The fit-out for Fora workspace on floors 2-7 is by Piercy&Company. One of the main features of the scheme is a double-height multifunctional event space connecting the fourth and fifth floors with amphitheatre-style seating incorporating a feature stair.
Guided tours on Friday 19 September. More information here