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Buildings
House in Highgate, London
Using a garage as base, a piece of 1950s ‘Scandinavian Modern’ is joined by a separate house that’s an elaboration of a room.
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The room has 5 thematic and geometric parts, each with companion spaces. There is a mezzanine below the largest roof ‘Dalek.’
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The two main walls shed light on the purposes of the companion spaces.
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Years later, the two houses are integrated.
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The harmonisation of two periods by the construction of mediating pieces.
House in Guildford, Surrey
Emanating outwards from a modest horse stable at its core, and with sequential granting of development rights for five phases, each following immediately on to the next, a house synthesised exercises in stone and curved glass. A small timber dwelling standing nearby was also renovated.
Insurance Company Offices, Copenhagen
After work coordinating the block plan that involved the designs of four invited architects, the southern building for an insurance company – viewed as part of a metaphorical town wall – mixed offices and apartments.
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The internal and external language take cues from Danish tradition and modernist utility.
Three old barns on the perimeter of wasteland were transformed into a pond-garden, dwelling, offices and a performance space for the local community. A glasshouse and upgraded country house completed the cluster.
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Office suites within a reconfigured byre.
Rural Regeneration, Kent
Offices and Workshops, Oxfordshire
A loosely interpreted villa housed the varied activities of a small high-tech company.
This nine-storey building is part of a group of three housing the Institute for the Deaf. It adheres to the Berlin genius loci of 20-metre plots and 22-metre cornice height. Apart from a bowling alley and car parking in the basement, the piece contains performance, retail, office and residential uses.
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The typicalities of the Berlin triple-height entrance hall and rear courtyard outhouse are adapted, in the latter case as studios.
Mixed Use Building, Friedrichstrasse, Berlin
Factory and Offices for Siemens, Berlin
Intended as a building that would capture civic presence for the world of manual work, natural anodised aluminium panels delineate a mostly-symmetrical, three-part facade. In this way ‘Stone Berlin’ reflects light rather than absorb it. The landscaped courtyard has walls of maintenance-free white ceramic brickwork.
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Roof ‘Daleks’ control the direction from which light enters the workplace, acting also as automatic smoke release devices in the event of internal fire. The exposed structure and stripped aesthetic of stair landings fulfils both the needs of circulation and use for informal gatherings, adjacent to sitting-eye-level windows.
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Explorations of grey colour for external walls – part of the genius loci of Berlin. A red wall denotes the 90-minute fire barrier between the High Rack Warehouse and working areas.
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The courtyard in its raw state. Prefabricated concrete wall panels surround a poured-in-place reinforced concrete rooflight (with solar oculi), above the various levels of the High Rack Warehouse; composite steel and concrete structure.
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Computer analysis of the single length steel newel post to the main staircase.
A 4-bay, aesthetically restrained, piece that hit some ‘environmentally sound’ targets, appropriate for an energy company – first of three phases.
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The entrance leads to social and meeting rooms on one side and a powerhouse full of screens on the other.
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Settled into its semi-rural context, the building is dressed architecturally in the garb of ‘environmentally sound’ modules.
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Offices, Mold
Regeneration of St Mary’s School, Manchester
Following selective demolition, retained and new building parts are united by a covered play-courtyard.
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Circulation routes visually relate to the courtyard in a variety of ways.
Following master planning work, demolition of the defunct 1920s houses commencing at the north, the local authority and developer decided on a first phase separating 90 social dwellings from 100 open market houses across the main north-south avenue from one another. The housing association neighbourhood adopted ‘Home Zone’ principles with shared surfaces.
Norris Social Housing, Liverpool
Hendre Primary School, Carnarfon
Surrounded by three of the most-deprived wards in Britain, the idea was to create a place where ‘belonging’ would underpin children’s experience from pre-school to the exodus to secondary education elsewhere. This goal is made manifest by a ring of buildings surrounding two interconnected courtyards. A long porte-cochère leads to the main entrance from which, starting with a move to the left, the different stages of learning are contained within their own ‘houses.’ A hall, with Olympic-standard basketball dimensions, is also used by the wider community for multiple activities.
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Caernarfon castle is an analogous spatial structure that, given its local reputation as oppressor, was never openly discussed – yet by turning its meaning around from alienation and violence to belonging and play, the children have central defensible spaces, akin to upper and lower Wards. Gardens rather than enemies lie outside the ‘walls.’
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Each ‘house’ has its own outside garden and access to the inner ‘Wards’.
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Each ‘house’ has its own shaping of roof daylight and sunlight, the notion being that this might add to the particularity of each stage of learning in children’s minds, from kindergarten to Year 6.
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Mulberry Early Years School, London
With no land to expand horizontally; and with an existing 1960s building incapable of taking further structural load, vertical expansion stands on 4 columns, minimising playground dangers. The building relates to the scale of its neighbours with solar shading features and wall-mounted photovoltaic panels contributing to an A-rated EPC. A ‘beanstalk’ provides full accessibility to all levels of the resultant 3-level school.
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The plan is simple. An existing stair is extended upwards; the hall (used for exhibitions) accesses 4 activity rooms (capable of being variously opened and closed one to another); storage is accessible from both sides, mechanical and electrical services located above; the ‘beanstalk’ with lift and stair is clad in a manner rendering light magical. The structure of 4 columns supports storey-height trusses; a ‘cloud’ covers an outdoor roof playground from rain. Structural fins to the lift are particularised at each level – steel offcuts used in a garden elsewhere.
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Translucency of the adaptable activity space creates learning focus. When 4 separate rooms, each has a degree of transparency to the outside world. Two special etched windows say ‘hello’ to those inside and those passing by.
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The building glows in winter and during performance evenings – perhaps communicating something about the power of education. The roof playground is used year-round, in all weathers.
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To prevent rain falling from the south-facing solar shade onto the heads of hardly weather-protected players below, water is taken down by chain. An oculus in the shade marks a particular time of the solar year. A ‘pencil’ provides an appropriate capping to a S+WVP.
