London students turn servers, warehouses and care homes into future city ideas
Sweet peppers warmed by computer servers and cows living in a former care home are among the student ideas on show in London on 9–10 October.
Festival of the Future 2026 runs on those dates at the Royal College of Art in Battersea, London. Entry is free.
The two-day celebration is produced by Beyond the Box CIC, a community interest company, a business set up to benefit the community rather than private shareholders. It focuses on architecture, engineering, planning and the wider built environment, the streets, homes and public spaces around us. Visitors can join hands-on workshops, practical sessions where people make and test ideas rather than just look at displays, according to Beyond the Box CIC.
The student show brings together five London architecture schools: the University of Westminster, London Metropolitan University, Ravensbourne University London, the Architectural Association School of Architecture and Central Saint Martins. That mix means visitors see side-by-side proposals from different courses and teaching approaches. The line-up was detailed by Dezeen School Shows as part of its coverage of the festival exhibits.
One proposal is The Pepper Exchange by Ava Macgregor, a Master of Architecture student at the University of Westminster in London. The course is the MArch (RIBA Part 2), the second stage of training towards becoming an architect in Britain. Macgregor suggests capturing waste heat from liquid-cooled servers, computers cooled by liquid rather than fans, and channelling it into high-tech greenhouses. The aim is to grow sweet peppers year-round inside the city.
Other exhibits stay close to everyday places. One reworks a former warehouse, a large storage building, into community workshop and studio spaces where people can make things and share tools. Another proposes a public plaza, an open paved meeting space, for the Isle of Dogs peninsula in London. A third imagines a care home, sports hall and nursery converted into a self-sustaining centre for cows, with the animals, food and energy systems supporting each other on one site. All three were among the projects on display noted by Dezeen School Shows.
This is the second edition of Festival of the Future. Organisers present it as an architecture-focused weekend with workshops for non-specialists as well as students. No tickets or design background are needed, just curiosity.
What makes this stand out is the starting point. The students begin with buildings most people know, a warehouse, a plaza, a nursery. Then they ask what else those places could do.
