The People's Pavilion - 'The Reverie'

Students Shariyar Ahmed, Samira Elbahja, and Delilah Jamal, won the People’s Pavilion competition with their design ‘The Reverie’. Pictured at the opening of the festival in August.

Built in just 5 weeks, team ‘The Reverie’ is the inaugural winner of the People’s Pavilion design competition.

Taking the form of a wonderful cluster of tree-like structures, the winning design ‘The Reverie’ has now been constructed at the Here East campus in Stratford and will host a series of events from 21st-30th August.

The winning designers are Shahriyar Ahmed (18), Samira Elbahja (17) and Dellilah Jamal (17) from Tower Hamlets, whom we were proud to support during the design development phase. A successful crowdfunding campaign subsequently raised over £9,000 to fund the build, which was carried out by the structural engineering team at Scale Rule CIC, in collaboration with Refabricate and DHD Ltd, and a number of architectural students.

The project, run by Beyond the Box Consultants, tested a new approach to co-design with young people, engaging them in placemaking and cultural programming. To date, the People’s Pavilion has engaged with over 150 young East Londoners since launching in the middle of the pandemic in 2020.

Ten Cultural Producers (aged 15-25 from East London and selected to undertake training in cultural production) have now launched ‘Envision East Festival’, a variety of themed events held at the People’s Pavilion in the last week of August. 

Congratulations again to Samira, Delilah, Shariyar and all the other talented young people involved in designing and curating the pavilion and festival programme. We can’t wait to see what you do next!