Summer Flowers –  Wolff Architects Exhibition | UCL Urban Room

The Summer Flowers exhibition combines sound, drawings, plant pressings and texts by the author Bessie Head to explore themes of belonging between apartheid-era South Africa and Serowe, Botswana. Created by Ilze Wolff of Wolff Architects, the exhibition is an immersive space to experience ‘liberation architecture’, where Bessie Head's words and her garden archive become tools to interrogate power dynamics.  

The Urban Room installation of Summer Flowers builds on its earlier presentations at the Dakar Biennale and the Chicago Architecture Biennale. This tender work gains an interactive studio component within the university. Throughout the exhibition, visitors are invited to listen to vinyl on a record player crafted by sculptor Dada Khanyisa. Ticketed zine-making, plant-pressing and vinyl-listening sessions will also be held during the exhibition – details to follow. 

Plan your visit

The exhibition runs from 30 January – 31 May 2024.

Visit Monday – Saturday, 10:00 – 18:00, no need to book. 

The exhibition space will occasionally be closed for workshops, please visit the Urban Room Instagram channel to find out more and plan your visit.  

Tickets are required for the opening event on 30 January, 18:30 – 21:00. Book your ticket for the free opening event. 

Exhibition Opening | Friday 30 January | 18:30 - 21:00

The Urban Room exhibition opens with a film screening of Summer Flowers followed by a conversation around emancipatory practices between architects Ilze Wolff and Mpho Matsipa. 

Book to Attend

Wolff Architects

Wolff Architects is a design studio concerned with developing an architectural practice of consequence through the mediums of design, advocacy, research and documentation. In their Cape Town office, Ilze & Heinrich Wolff lead a team of highly skilled, committed and engaged architects, creative practitioners and administrators. Heinrich held visiting professorships at Harvard GSD (2021/22) and ETH Zurich (2014/5). Ilze was a Dean’s Visiting A. Professor at Columbia University GSAPP (2023/24) and is currently a Professor of Practice in Architecture at the School of Architecture at Liverpool University (2023 to present). Both principals lecture internationally in countries such as Switzerland, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada, Japan and India. The work of the practice has also been included at various international exhibitions including the Venice Architecture Biennale, Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Architecture Biennale, the São Paulo Art Biennale, and the South American Architecture Biennale. In 2023 the practice was awarded an honourable mention for their work 'Tectonic Shifts' at the 18th Venice Architectural Biennale, curated by Lesley Lokko.

Bessie Head

Bessie Emery Head (1937-1986) was born in South Africa, and considered Botswana’s most influential writer. She was the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. Her key works include When Rain Clouds Gather (1969), A Question of Power (1973) and Tales of Tenderness and Power (1991). In the 1950s and 1960s, she was also a teacher and then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964, she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. 

About the UCL Urban Room

Located at One Pool Street, the public-facing UCL Urban Room hosts events, exhibitions, workshops and engagement with local stakeholders, professional audiences, and the wider public. Exploring the impact of industry, globalisation, regeneration and gentrification on the six Olympic Park boroughs and their people, UCL Urban Room is a partnership between UCL Urban Laboratory, The Bartlett, School for the Creative and Cultural Industries and UCL Library Services: Special Collections.

For more information email urbanroom@ucl.ac.uk.

Image: Summer Flowers, Wolff Architects