Reciprocity - Architectures of Exchange | Architecture Fringe Festival 2025

Reciprocity - Architectures of Exchange | Architecture Fringe Festival 2025

Architecture Fringe
06-22 June 2025
Across Scotland and further afield

co-produced with Kam Chan, Dom Hogston, Mary Holmes, Scott McAulay, Neil McGuire

The seventh edition of the Architecture Fringe took place in June 2025 and was structured under the thematic provocation of Reciprocity - Architectures of Exchange. The Architecture Fringe 2025 saw 90 projects, events, exhibitions, performances, talks, and tours taking place across Scotland and further afield.

Reciprocity is the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit, to aid one another in self-interest or in solidarity, to give as well as to receive, and to invest in and improve conditions, situations and relationships.

For architecture, reciprocity helps to remind us that the functioning of our world relies on the presence, assistance, and positive actions of other people. Reciprocity is an important social norm that informs human behaviour and aids our wellbeing. It promotes sociability and encourages people to work together - foundational requirements for the viability of our towns, cities and landscapes.

To explore Reciprocity we developed a commissioned core programme which sought to find common ground and opportunities for mutual aid and reciprocal exchange. In this spirit, we invited the Irish Architecture Foundation to exhibit work outside of Ireland for the very first time, with their touring exhibition The Reason Of Towns; Recipro-Cities - a research and design project exploring prototypal architectures which are collaborative, reciprocal and transformational rather than extractive or transactional, with commissioned work from Arc Architects, BothAnd Group and Resolve Collective; and a morning of provocation and discussion via a co-design workshop to collectively imagine what a new international summer school based in Scotland might be like.

The open programme continued to be a platform for exciting work from established and new voices. Shifting Order / Data Visuals & Loose Maps was an open-ended enquiry into land use in Glasgow—mapping how shifting, self-built spaces persist alongside large-scale development; The Museum of Dad - a guided tour through the imaginary museum holding the archive of Andrew Nicoll, Dundee Rep architect, it’s contents telling the stories that Alzheimer’s made him forget; and the National Galleries of Scotland hosted Forensic Architecture to examine human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia, and the law to investigate state and corporate violence through lens-based methods and media.

This year’s festival was supported via Multi-Year Funding from Creative Scotland, with additional funding from made Moxon Architects, Helen Lucas Architects and Collective Architecture.

Image: AF2025 identity