Celebrate This Place: Love Architecture Festival 2013

It’s kind of an annoying truism, but still – whether you like it or not, architecture massively affects every day of your life. So it comes as a welcome surprise that the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is throwing its own festival in celebration of places and buildings at the end of this month. Spread across the entire country, the Manchester events are particularly special. The penultimate day of the festival offers perhaps the most tantalising session: a 90-minute photographic tour around the iconic MMU Toast Rack in Fallowfield (Sat 29 Jun, free) promises to inform while giving attendees the opportunity to document the bizarre but much-loved landmark. There is also the Open House project (Sat 29 Jun, free), where buildings that are usually off limits open their doors to the public (participants include Chetham’s School of Music, City Tower and Hulme Hippodrome), while a guided walk through the so-called ‘cradle of industrialisation’, Ancoats, led by Dr Julian Holder of English heritage (Wed 26 and Sun 30 Jun, free – tickets required) should offer a glimpse of an area of the city many seem to have forgotten or written off. Among the many events on the programme there is urban sketching and a much-anticipated tour of the Town Hall complex. A must for anyone with an interest in Architecture, or simply anybody who is a little bit nosey.

Fri 21 – Sun 30 Jun, Various Venues, www.lovearchitecture.org