The Studio

The Studio in Old Street is Forefront’s HQ, office and creative space. It is the physical anchor for the organisation, a place to convene our network and test ideas at the intersection of architecture, art and the built environment.

134 Forefront is our exhibition programme and specialist, cross‑sector space for experimentation. We explore how architecture connects with other cultural fields, from fine art to material research and making. The programme focuses on process, materials and the sensory or overlooked dimensions of the built environment, using our dynamic, street‑facing space to test ideas that reach beyond its walls.

Across the year, we host exhibitions, installations, talks and events, that  bring together architects, designers, artists and makers, while remaining open to the wider public.

The Studio sits alongside our wider projects, forming one connected approach to culture in the built environment.

Opening hours
Tuesday - Friday 10-5pm

Milieu, 134 Old Street
London, EC1V 9BL

BdeC, Ptolemy Mann, Intertwined

19 June 2026 - 25 September 2026

Intertwined

Intertwined presents the work of architecture studio Bureau de Change in conversation with textile artist Ptolemy Mann. Both practitioners begin from a shared premise: weaving and building are one constructive logic expressed through diverging materials. This link is both conceptual and etymological: the words 'architecture' and 'textile' descend from the same root, teks – 'to weave, to fabricate' – a lineage Mann in particular has spent three decades excavating at the intersection of cloth and structure. This exhibition articulates how both disciplines compose a continuous surface from one repeated unit: in this case, the brick and the thread.

Ptolemy Mann

Ptolemy Mann creates large-scale, hand-dyed woven works and paintings exploring the possibilities of colour, light and material precision. Drawing on optical effects and natural phenomena, she layers dye, thread, paper and paint into meditative abstractions. Her practice spans international commissions, lecturing, writing and curating.

Bureau de Change

Founded by Katerina Dionysopoulou and Billy Mavropoulos, Bureau de Change combines architectural rigour with playful, material-led experimentation. Their work evolves through analysis, prototyping and making, shaping spaces with sculptural clarity. The studio has received multiple awards, including FX Breakthrough Talent, Sunday Times Architect of the Year and an RIBA Award.

Part W, Women's Work: London

7 May - 15 June 2026

Women’s Work: London

Women’s Work: London highlights built projects across the city in which women have played significant roles, bringing visibility to contributions that have often been overlooked within architectural history. The project offers a focused selection from a much wider landscape of work shaped by women.

About Part W

Part W is a collective of women working across architecture, design, infrastructure and construction, advocating for gender equity and systemic change within the built environment.

Jan Hendzel, An Offering

27 February 2026 – 17 April 2026

An Offering

An Offering presents a series of works by Jan Hendzel that unfold between material knowledge and embodied making. Wooden sculptures, crafted furniture pieces and small maquettes form a collective installation conceived through a logic Hendzel calls Timber and Technique, where carving, turning, stacking and alignment become rhythmic acts of assembly.

The exhibition is shaped as a reciprocal gesture: Hendzel’s work is offered to those who encounter it, emerging from the offering made by the gallery through the commission and platform. As a result, the space is transformed into an intimate place of process, memory and making. 


About Jan Hendzel

Jan Hendzel is the founder of Jan Hendzel Studio, where a passion for play, experimentation and British timbers has shaped a distinct design language defined by large-format, sculptural simplicity and finely resolved technical detail. The workshop designs and makes expressive timber furniture and objects, producing an art that moves fluidly between digital processes and handcraft and is guided by sustainability, tactility and an obsessive commitment to process.

About Giles Tettey Nartey

Giles Tettey Nartey is a British-Ghanaian artist and architect. His research-based practice spans filmmaking, creative direction, installation, performance and object design. Nartey has served as curatorial collaborator for An Offering, selecting from Hendzel’s existing works and influencing the development of a new, site-responsive sculpture.

Hanna Benihoud, The Living Room

9 January – 24 February 2026

The Living Room

The Living Room proposes a radical act: celebrating ordinary women in public space. The work forms part of the artist's ongoing practice of taking up space with larger-than-life women who share real, lived experiences.

About Hanna Benihoud
Hanna Benihoud is an interdisciplinary artist who left architecture to found her studio in 2016. Her practice combines public art, wayfinding, illustration and animation, challenging where architecture ends and art begins.

Jason Bruges Studio, Living Cornice

18 September 2025 – 6 January 2026

Living Cornice

Living Cornice is the inaugural exhibition by Forefront, presented in collaboration with Jason Bruges Studio. Installed within Forefront’s gallery HQ in Old Street, the exhibition showcases a series of lumino-kinetic prototypes that explore dynamic computational caustics through choreographed metallic forms. Drawing subtle references from neoclassical architecture, the works animate light as a living material, producing shifting reflections that transform the surrounding space into a theatrical environment.

Offering a behind-the-scenes insight into process and experimentation, Living Cornice reveals how inanimate structures are engineered to behave as responsive reflectors. The exhibition functions both as a standalone installation and as an experimental testing ground for a forthcoming public artwork commissioned by Forefront for a passageway in Euston.

Marking the beginning of Forefront’s wider programme, Living Cornice establishes a platform for dialogue between art, architecture and the built environment.


“This project is a celebration of the technological craft that transforms liminal, often overlooked spaces into captivating cultural interventions that ignite the imagination and inspire wonder. Through a behind-the-scenes glimpse of prototypes and experiments, the exhibition shares the process of turning the inanimate into living reflectors.”

– Jason Bruges, founder of Jason Bruges Studio

About Jason Bruges Studio

Jason Bruges Studio is a dynamic, multidisciplinary art practice based in London. Established in 2002, the Studio is internationally renowned as a pioneer of the hybrid space between art, architecture, and technology. Exploring the interrelationships between people, data, nature and technology, the team creates high-tech, site-specific artworks and dynamic, spatial experiences. Intervening in the urban environment, they produce moments of theatre that connect people with their environments and weave a sense of magic into the fabric of a place.