THE ARCHITECTURE OF BELONGING: In-Between A public event series by STIR x ROCA Gallery London, in partnership with London Festival of Architecture 2026
Many of us find ourselves living in threshold states — between cultures, between cities, between the identities we inherit and the ones we build. In-Between is not a condition of absence. It is where some of the most urgent spatial and cultural thinking is happening right now. For the first session of The Architecture of Belonging, we bring together four diverse creative practitioners across architecture, curatorship, filmmaking, art and performance, each working at the edges of their discipline, each speaking from and about the spaces that fall between belonging and exclusion, memory and erasure, arrival and home.
Through a series of short monologues followed by open conversation, the session asks: what does it mean to belong and what does the architecture of belonging look like in your own work. Whose stories get housed in our institutions, our streets, our cities and our memories, and how? Who gets access to those?
Format: each speaker gets 7-10mins to talk about the theme through visuals or words. Followed by a conversation anchored by Samta Nadeem Curatorial Director, STIR
Speakers:
Sahra Hersi: Spatial designer, artist, background in architecture, works with communities and the idea of home. She just opened a wonderful installation at the inauguration of V&A East.
Jim Stephenson: Architecture Photographer & Filmmaker. Observational practice on how people belong in space.
Adam Kaasa: Architect, performer, academic at RCA.
Manijeh Verghese: CEO Open City, architect, curator, public programmer