Portfolio

This project required a sensitive response to a rural landscape environment and the end user. These requirements included a clear and unimpeded movement of visitors from arrival to departure; uplifting yet dignified spaces for the mourning party; landscape and commemoration that provide a space for memory and evocation; and form and material use that provides reassurance and solace.

The relationship between the building and its context is reinforced by the undulating roofscapes, with their sedum coverings, and the use of natural materials in both the structure and cladding.
To aid the mourners’ grieving process, the chapel space features a large, glazed window with views to a formal garden with a reflection pool and the surrounding pastoral landscape. This relationship with the landscape is consolidated by the sheltered waiting areas at the entrance and in the cloistered route from the chapel to the floral tribute area.

Our delivery of a new £27 million Conference Centre in Blackpool’s historic Winter Gardens is a key part of the local council’s investment and regeneration strategy.

The new steel-framed conference centre provides the capacity to stage major conferences catering to up to 7,000 delegates. New, state-of-the-art facilities include an environmentally controlled exhibition space and an atrium reception and entrance to the Winter Gardens.

The contemporary building has been designed as a landmark to complement the Victorian heritage of the adjacent, listed Winter Gardens ballroom and Opera House. Introduced part-way through the traditional design phases, we reduced the overall steel frame weight by 40 tonnes.

We also developed an intricate sequence of works which respects the adjacent listed structures and maintained a full art and performance programme throughout construction.

Creating prayer and reflection space — a historic Jewish Cemetery extension. Bushey Cemetery is a Jewish cemetery, located on a 16-acre site of outstanding natural beauty in London’s Green Belt. The simple yet striking extension comprises two new prayer halls, a series of service buildings and increased burial site capacity from 43,000 to 60,000 graves.

The Jewish faith has a tenant that burial places are looked after in perpetuity; forever. The Bushey Cemetery extension provides new capacity and is the first new consecration of a United Synagogue burial site in the UK in 50 years. The project was delivered in two phases. The initial enabling works saw the installation of major civil engineering and landscaping works, including swales, weirs and ponds. This helps maintain natural drainage on-site and provides new wildlife habitats. The prayer halls and associated buildings formed phase two.

We worked with Waugh Thistleton Architects and landscape architects J and L Gibbons to deliver the extension that will continue serving London and Hertfordshire communities for the next 50 years. Our civil and structural engineers worked with Earth Structures, an Australian rammed earth construction specialist firm, to construct the seven-metre-high ceremonial walls.

Lying on the north bank of the River Thames, Fulham Palace is in southwest London. The site is of national importance. Until the late 20th century, it served as the London residence of the Bishop of London.

The building is Grade I listed and set within gardens which are Grade II*, a noted historic landscape and Scheduled Ancient Monument. The site has been developed by various bishops over the centuries and consists of a Tudor Quadrangle to the west and a later Quadrangle to the east. There are several 19th-century additions and alterations, including a chapel to the south. Fulham Palace is currently used as a visitors' centre with part of the building being tenanted office space.

The project is Heritage Lottery Funded (HLF) and proposals include the restoration of the historic structure and refurbishment of the visitors' centre and office spaces. It is proposed to create new exhibition spaces as part of the visitor experience and improve access throughout the site.

On the proposed site for the Grenadier House development is an existing office building of five storeys plus a basement.

The site is located in Westminster close to the River Thames and is in flood zone 3 defended.

The proposals include the demolition of the existing building and the redevelopment of the site to create a new residential housing scheme. It will comprise of two residential buildings of six storeys, with self-contained residences above a ground floor level of communal areas and a central shared garden. There will also be a basement level housing a car park.

Deep piles are considered the most appropriate foundation solution due to the high loads from the proposed building and the significant thickness of made ground. The superstructure will be formed of reinforced concrete flat slabs supported on core walls and columns.

Images: Forbes Massie

Grønlikaia is a major, new waterfront transformation project in the heart of Oslo, Norway. As one of the last waterfront sites in the city, it is an opportunity to create an inclusive and diverse “fjord city”, aimed at a wide variety of Oslo’s population, including the underserved communities of the eastern parts of the city.

Londonon gathered a team of experts in sustainability, placemaking, new forms of living, circular and doughnut economy, landscape design, and waterfront development. The exemplary project is making the water more accessible and creating new public spaces, cultural institutions, active streetscapes, and exceptional architecture.

The proposal will accommodate all the inhabitants of the site, both above and below the water. It uses upcycled marine steel to create a low-carbon quay-front and new habitats for fish, which will help to maintain existing marine and land-based natural resources as a central tenet of the development. All new buildings are designed to create better ecological conditions, contributing to the much-needed restoration of marine life in the Oslo fjord.

The original 1965 Guildford Crematorium building has been rebuilt to respond to modern funeral, memorial and mechanical practices.

The unusual geometric form of the chapel roof was facilitated by providing a series of parametrically generated fanning struts within the roof volume. This ensured that the glulam timber roof elements were kept slender whilst creating additional architectural interest.

The exposed concrete columns around the remembrance court and reflective pool were cast offsite as a cost-effective way to ensure a high-quality finish. The scheme also uses exposed concrete soffits and masonry internally to provide thermal mass to reduce heating loads. Additional heating is provided via heat recovery directly from the cremator.

As part of the SuDS strategy, access roads across the site drain to shallow swales and gravel trenches, providing flood, landscape and wildlife benefits. The new visitor’s car park incorporates a permeable paving system, which both attenuates surface water and improves water quality via the removal of hydrocarbons.

These SuDS features are interlinked to ensure the system is hydraulically optimised, discharging surface water at a heavily restricted rate to a neighbouring stream. This helps reduce the load on the local sewer network and will reduce the overall risk of flooding both on-site and within the local area.

The Horniman Museum wanted to create a better link between the museum and its surrounding gardens. The project involved the design of a new pavilion building along with the restoration and refurbishment of the Grade II listed Bandstand and Dutch Barn.

The pavilion’s basic structure is timber framed and built off a piled reinforced concrete floor. Glazed sides help integrate the gardens with the exhibits showcased inside.

A new teaching and exhibition room has been created along with associated amenities, such as toilets and kitchen facilities. The site presented a geotechnical challenge with desiccated clay subsoil, mature trees and steep slopes. The renovation of the bandstand required a sympathetic approach with traditional repair techniques adopted for the timber works. The original weather vane was preserved and the base was reforged.

The Hoxton Cinema project is a highly sustainable multi-use development set within a vibrant East London setting.

Cross-laminated timber was used to build the majority of the superstructure, creating spacious and high-quality residential apartments whilst offering efficient and environmentally friendly site construction.

Using reinforced concrete transfer structures, we overcame the challenges of the different layouts between the ground floor and basement cinema spaces and the residential apartments above.

Careful reconstruction and restoration of the original Art Deco façade has maintained the legacy of a much-loved historic building for future generations to enjoy.

The Department of Engineering at King’s College London is growing and needed new space for its diverse teaching, learning and research activities. Our ambitious conversion in 2022 of a semi-derelict two-storey basement and unloved quadrangle between the Grade I-listed Somerset House and King's Building has created vibrant new accommodation for the department and a social heart for the central London campus.

We explored the viability of retaining the neglected structure through targeted investigations. These included thermographic surveys of the structure, to quantify the impact of water ingress on the structural frame. Our detailed back-analysis confirmed the structure’s residual capacity was more than capable of the proposed use, allowing the space to be retained and adapted for future use. 

We devised a strategic approach to working on an active central London campus, implementing a rigorous monitoring regime during enabling works to quantify disruption to campus life. This data-driven approach minimised disturbances and allowed the department to continue to operate throughout building works. The benefits of retention over demolition on an operational urban campus go beyond carbon. Less demolition meant reduced dust, improved air quality and fewer vehicle movements. Most importantly, our approach minimised disruption to campus life.

Winner of the 2019 RIBA National award, Kettle’s Yard is home to a remarkable collection of modern art and a gallery for contemporary art exhibitions. It is a beloved Cambridge institution located near the city’s historic centre. 

The design gently updates the original cottage houses, and the 1970s extension was partly demolished and rebuilt. New spaces include a street-side entrance, two spacious double-height galleries, a window display area, an education wing, a shop and a cafe. We worked closely with Jamie Fobert Architects (JFA) and the main contractor SDC to design and sequence this complex and highly sensitive gallery refurbishment project to preserve and extend the life of the gallery.

We were selected alongside Waugh Thistleton to design a temporary pavilion for the British Embassy to host events and world leaders during the London Olympic Games in 2012. Working within an extremely tight time frame to ensure the pavilion was ready to welcome visitors from the onset of the Olympics.

Installed on the Mall, the simple design composed of timber and glass complements the classical facade of the neighbouring Grade-I listed Lancaster House.

With one-third of the structure built above Lancaster House's basement and terrace, we undertook assessments to confirm the structures capacity to support the new proposed loads from the 300-person capacity pavilion.

To facilitate accessibility, we also designed two temporary ramps using a timber and ply solution. Seamlessly connecting the pavilion to the garden level below.

The refurbishment project involved a series of adjustments to an existing 19th-century Church of England Convent. We collaborated closely with Hall McKnight and the project team on the refurbishment, resulting in a remarkable transformation that balances preservation with modern functionality.

Whilst primarily focussed around changes to internal layouts to accommodate new functions, including office space and conferencing facilities, the project also added an entrance building and a stair tower to resolve circulatory problems and recover a coherent pattern of circulation.

A key addition to the convent is the glazed entrance arches, which seamlessly modulate changes in space, materiality, texture, and light.

Photography copyright: Lorenzo Zandri

We provided design services to update and extend the Thackray Medical Museum. The museum exhibits and educates the public on medical history from the past to the present.

Funded through a joint application to the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Welcome Trust, the works included re-ordering exhibition spaces, formation of voids through existing floor zones and opening up the main staircase and surrounding structure to create a welcoming, light-filled atrium.

The existing Grade II-listed building has had various uses since its construction in the late 1800s. It originally formed part of the Leeds Workhouse facility, then taken over by the NHS and incorporated into the Leeds St. James’s hospital campus, before being deemed unfit for modern medical use in the 1990s and adapted into its present use.

As a listed building, we played a central to the project, ensuring alterations were sensitive to the existing structure whilst also maximising the building's potential.

We provided structural engineering services for the adaptive reuse of Victorian school buildings into 25,000 sq ft of rehearsal and production facilities, galleries, office space, and a café.

During the initial construction phase, a new gallery was created behind the existing school wall using wrought iron trusses from the original bike sheds. The trusses were taken off-site, refurbished, and returned with new elongated columns and extended eave cantilevers to create a larger space.

To provide disabled access to all parts of the building, a new two-storey glass walkway was hung off the side of the existing building, avoiding the need for expensive piled foundations.

In the second phase of work, a kitchen block was added along with a steel and glass side extension.

Part of Tallinn’s 2022 Architecture Biennale, The Circular Block competition invited participants to consider Lasnamäe. As Tallinn’s most populous suburb, it is the site of a multi-layered design and research project
questioning established linear models of production and consumption, and proposing strategies that could shift the district towards integrated and socially responsive circular systems.

Designed by Londonon (Morris+Company, Mae, Haptic, Gort Scott, Coffey Architects, Turner Works) in collaboration with Neighbourhood and Skelly & Couch, ‘The Unfinished City’ considers all invited scales of enquiry and represents a comprehensive vision for a circular district, driven by empowered residents through adaptable structures of highly participatory governance and decision-making. We imagine a digitally-enabled ‘People’s Parliament’, with strong social connections fostered in the physical pursuit of growing, sharing and reuse. The activity is rooted in a productive hydraulic landscape and shared spaces constructed from repurposed materials and redundant building components.

Ultimately, the district, forever ‘unfinished’, sustains its own continual renewal and inspires and offers support to a wider movement of kindred projects. The Unfinished City was exhibited at the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale and awarded an honourable mention by the competition judges.

When the London Borough of Tower Hamlets sought to consolidate their offices and create a welcoming, accessible community hub in the heart of the borough, the former Royal London Hospital building in Whitechapel offered the perfect setting.

Architectural heritage and modern design and materials meet in the refurbishing of this historic landmark building dating back to the 1750s. The 30,000 m2 structure underwent a massive makeover, resulting in the consolidation of several of the town council’s offices in one centralised, accessible location, providing a range of public services to borough residents. Designed with architects AHMM, the project comprised a complicated refurbishment of the existing building, along with the construction of a new, exposed RC-frame extension to create a landmark Town Hall.

Providing structural and civil engineering services, we prioritised sustainability and minimal intervention throughout the design, devising intelligent solutions to attenuate the impact of any additional load on the existing infrastructure of, and around, the site. Open from 27th February 2023, the BREEAM ‘Excellent’ building is an important investment in one of London’s most deprived boroughs. Delivering much-needed public resources for residents, the building is a new civic hub that preserves important architectural heritage.

Westminster Chapel is a community-centred Grade II Listed Evangelical Church and a Landmark Building within the City of Westminster. The Chapel is home to the Westminster Foodbank and Christians Against Poverty Debt Centre and also hosts Sunday services of singing, preaching, discipleship and training academies. With congregational number growing the Chapel needed to update the building complex to continue to support the church’s growth and outreach programme.

Our works included the rationalisation and improvement of accessibility throughout the building via the formation of new openings and full-height void spaces. This involved a detailed investigation of the existing load paths and the provision of new steel beams over some of the larger openings, and to provide lateral stability to some of the walls where floors were being removed. Our proposals included removing a series of posts to the existing cantilevered balcony structure in the auditorium space. 

Shortlisted in the New London Architecture NLA2019 Awards, in the Conservation and Retrofit category, Whitehall Museum is a timber-framed, continuous jetty 16th century house mostly clad in 18th century white painted weatherboarding. As a rare example of Tudor architecture on a domestic scale, the grade II* listed building is of significant historic interest within the borough, where Whitehall sits at the heart of the historic Cheam Village Conservation Area.

Whitehall Museum was opened to the community as a local museum and historic house in 1978 by the London Borough of Sutton. In a similar nature to Fulham Palace, Heritage Lottery Fund funding was sought to maximise access to the building and to meet the public expectations of a modern museum. This included two small extensions in keeping with the aesthetic of the house, and a reconfiguration of the internal layout and exhibition spaces.

The project also provided further opportunities to maintain and preserve the fabric and essence of the building and to open up more of the building to the public. The existing tearoom was already a staple of the local community; the conversion of the existing warden’s flat into a dedicated space for school and family activities helped integrate the museum into the daily life of the village.

The Hithe is an example of how timber can be used to create temporary, sustainable, and affordable buildings on unused plots of land. A low-cost, meanwhile incubator space in Rotherhithe, it has been designed as a circular economy demonstrator project, and will be demounted and relocated after 10 years.

Designed with IF_DO for the London Borough of Southwark and Meanwhile Space CIC. The relatively small site has been provided by the council on a meanwhile basis for 11 years. Working within a tight budget, the Hithe has been designed to be fully demountable and relocatable, ensuring long-term use. It is one of three circular economy demonstrator projects in London for CIRCuIT (Circular Construction in Regenerative Cities).