The London Architecture and Design Festival is part of a large cultural festival program that will last 12 weeks in the UK capital in 2012 and will end on 9 September. Within its framework, the first Velonnight on foggy Albion was launched.
The "Bicycle Night" project was proposed by Sergey Nikitin, Associate Professor of the Department of Theory and History of Culture of the Peoples 'Friendship University of Russia (Peoples' Friendship University of Russia) in 2006. His idea is cycling excursions, with the help of which people could get acquainted with the history, architecture, admire the landscapes of the most beautiful cities in the world. Such excursions have already been conducted with great success in Moscow, St. Petersburg, New York and Rome.
Now the turn has come to London, which this year is hosting the XXX Summer Olympic Games and on this occasion is trying to saturate its cultural life as much as possible.
Here, at midnight from June 23 to 24, the night walk along the 28-kilometer route, which took place in the east of London, started. The excursion was attended not only by Russians, but also by the British, who were re-acquainted with the history and architecture of this part of the city.
The contestants went to the stories of very famous people. The radio sounded lectures by Richard Rogers, the famous English architect, and Peter Ackroyd, a historian, author of a large number of monographs, tracing the changing life of Britons over the centuries. Historian Sergei Romanyuk spoke about the history of Russian London.
Participants of the "Velonoch" not only visited the historical part of the city, but also examined modern buildings - the Olympic stadium and the Olympic village in the Stratford area.
The walk ended at five in the morning local time, with the Canary Wharf business district at the end of the route. Here the participants of "Velonochi" were greeted with their program by the string ensemble.
The bike excursionists were very pleased with this format of acquaintance with the history of the architectural heritage. Well, the hardiest of them at ten in the morning witnessed another event of the festival of architecture and design, in which teams of professional designers competed in the structures of building models from thousands of cans.
