10 can’t-miss architecture & design events in August coming to LA, Chicago, London, Seattle, Tokyo, San Francisco, Columbus, Montreal, and East Hampton

The summer still has a lot to offer. Keep the season going with a variety of architecture and design events, exhibitions, and festivals on show throughout August.

From the roster of ongoing and upcoming events listed on Bustler, here are our featured picks worth checking out.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Plein Air Drawing: Architecture and Atmosphere | August 2, Los Angeles

"LACMA teaching artists will lead an open-air sketching session focusing on the museum’s new architecture and outdoor artworks. The session will begin with a tour of the transformed LACMA campus, highlighting the interplay of art, design, and the built environment. Afterwards, you'll join a relaxed, open-air drawing workshop aimed at sharpening your observation skills and sparking creative responses to light, shadow, and form. Teaching artists will guide you with structured prompts, suitable for all skill levels, from first-time sketchers to seasoned artists."

Trade Safe Chastity Box | August 7 – October 2, Los Angeles

Trade Safe Chastity Box is an interactive architectural device at the Materials & Applications Storefront that mimics "logics of surveillance and alienation. But instead of policing the body, the installation invites the body in — to flicker on a screen, to bump into another pulse. Surveillance devices typically deployed to police our public places — like CCTV cameras, floodlights, peepholes, and safety mirrors—are instead deployed as media for collective hiding and revealing, transforming M&A’s street-facing venue into a performative alleyway that gestures toward the city’s buried histories of cruising, of glances traded in plain view. Within Trade Safe Chastity Box, bodies are neither surveilled nor a spectacle. Visitors perform for cameras that don’t report, only reflect — they flicker and glitch, uncontainable and alive to each other."

Screening: E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea | August 13, San Francisco

"Attend a screening of E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House By the Sea, a docu-fiction film about pioneering Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray. Blending documentary and drama, the film traces the creation of her modernist masterpiece on the Côte d’Azur — and the controversy that followed when Le Corbusier intruded on her legacy."

Exhibit Columbus 2025 Exhibition: Yes And | August 15 – November 30, Columbus, Indiana

"This free, two-day series of events marks the debut of thirteen new outdoor, site-responsive installations created by leading architects, artists, and designers in collaboration with community partners from across Columbus. The exhibition has been built with partnerships across the diverse communities of Columbus and connected to the theme of the 2024–25 Cycle, Yes And. The modern design legacy serves as a world-class backdrop for living, creating an unmatched experience alongside contemporary art and architecture. Throughout the weekend, five signature events will enliven downtown with guided tours, conversations, celebrations, and installation activations."

LongHouse Landscape Legends – Modernist Landscapes | August 16, East Hampton

"LongHouse’s annual Landscape Legends symposium returns on August 16 with Modernist Landscapes: Visionaries and Their Gardens, a full-day program exploring the intersection of modernist architecture and garden design. Set in LongHouse’s 16-acre sculpture garden, the event includes morning talks, garden walks, and lunch among the grounds. This year’s program highlights the role of landscape in the work of iconic 20th-century figures including Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Russell Page, Louis I. Kahn, Harriet Pattison, and others. Speakers include Barry Bergdoll, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University; William Whitaker, Curator and Collections Manager of the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design; and Caleb Smith, Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University."

Seattle Design Festival 2025 | August 16–21, Seattle

"Join us for 6 days of transformative programming designed to unleash the design thinker in everyone and build more equitable communities through design. [...] The Seattle Design Festival Block Party is our signature event — a two-day street fair at Lake Union Park featuring large-scale installations, performances, and hands-on activities. For our 15th anniversary, the Block Party explores FEEDBACK as more than critique, but as a tool for discovery and meaningful dialogue. Join thousands of design enthusiasts and curious minds at this free, immersive experience that showcases how design shapes our everyday lives."

The Spaces Between | August 30–31, London

"The Spaces Between is a two-day creative festival in London, curated by Where are the Black Designers? It's both a celebration of Black creativity and a grassroots movement to create lasting change in the creative industries. Taking place in East London, one of the UK's major hubs of Black creativity, we're bringing together diverse voices from the city’s energetic neighborhoods and beyond. We're connecting across different geographies, cultural backgrounds, and creative disciplines while engaging local businesses and schools."

ONGOING EVENTS

Boliglaboratorium: A Danish Housing Lab | Until August 31, Chicago

"How do we create housing that addresses some of the greatest challenges of our time? This question forms the basis for Boliglaboratorium: A Danish Housing Lab. Six groundbreaking Danish architectural projects are exhibited to explore how housing can respond to the current climate crisis, future urban challenges, shifting family patterns and new ways of living. Common to all of them is that they will be realized as full-scale housing experiments in Denmark. The Danish examples offer models that can help new housing better fit into our neighborhoods through design excellence and a wider set of residential typologies."

The Architecture of Sou Fujimoto: Primordial Future Forest | Until November 9, Tokyo

"This landmark exhibition presents a comprehensive survey of Sou Fujimoto’s oeuvre — spanning over thirty years — from early competitions like the Aomori Museum of Art to his latest global projects, including the Expo 2025 Grand Ring and House of Music in Hungary. The show is organized into eight thematic sections, including a 'Forest of Tracks' chronology, immersive installations, large-scale models, and experimental presentations that embody Fujimoto’s thinking around openness, ambiguity, and complexity."

Records of Protest | Until November 30, Montreal

"The Groundwork series, currently on display in our Main Galleries, features the ongoing political endeavours of contemporary architects. Their stories demonstrate approaches to advocacy and activism in face of ecological collapses and social crises. While their processes are represented in this series through documentary film and research fragments, Records of Protest is a display of archival material from the CCA Collection exploring how architects in the past engaged with crises of their time. Posters, fliers, periodicals, reports, and news clippings from watershed moments reveal peripheral positions and grassroots opposition in face of capitalism, colonialism, oppression, and war."

Do you have an architecture or design event you want to promote? Submit it to our event calendar via Bustler for review and a potential feature.